Introduction

  The PostgreSQL regression tests are a comprehensive set of tests for the
  SQL implementation embedded in PostgreSQL developed by Jolly Chen and
  Andrew Yu. It tests standard SQL operations as well as the extensibility
  capabilities of PostgreSQL.

  These tests have recently been revised by Marc Fournier and Thomas Lockhart
  to become current for PostgreSQL v6.1. The tests are now packaged as
  functional units and should be easier to run and easier to interpret.

  Some properly installed and fully functional PostgreSQL installations
  can fail some of these regression tests due to artifacts of floating point
  representation and time zone support. The current tests are evaluated
  using a simple "diff" algorithm, and are sensitive to small system
  differences. For apparently failed tests, examining the differences
  may reveal that the differences are not significant.

Preparation

  The regression test is invoked by the 'make' command which compiles
  a 'c' program with PostgreSQL extension functions into a shared library
  in the current directory.  Localized shell scripts are also created in
  the current directory. The output file templates are massaged into the
  ./expected/*.out files.  The localization replaces macros in the source
  files with absolute pathnames and user names.

  The postmaster should be invoked with the system time zone set for
  Berkeley, California. On many systems, this can be accomplished by
  setting the TZ environment variable before starting the postmaster
  (for csh/bash; use set/export for some other shells):

    setenv TZ PST8PDT
    date
    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -s

  The "date" command above should have returned the current system time
  in the PST8PDT time zone. If the PST8PDT database is not available, then
  your system may have returned the time in GMT. If the PST8PDT time zone
  is not available, you can set the time zone rules explicitly:

    setenv TZ PST8PDT7,M04.01.0,M10.05.03

Directory Layout

  input/ .... .source files that are converted using 'make all' into
              some of the .sql files in the 'sql' subdirectory

  output/ ... .source files that are converted using 'make all' into
              .out files in the 'expected' subdirectory

  sql/ ...... .sql files used to perform the regression tests

  expected/ . .out files that represent what we *expect* the results to
              look like

  results/ .. .out files that represent what the results *actually* look
              like. Also used as temporary storage for table copy testing.

Running the regression test

  If you have prevously invoked the regression test, clean up the
  working directory with:

        make clean

  The regression test is invoked with the command:

        make all runtest

  Normally, the regression test should be run as the pg_superuser since
  the 'src/test/regress' directory and sub-directories are owned by the
  pg_superuser. If you run the regression test as another user the
  'src/test/regress' directory tree should be writeable to that user.

Comparing expected/actual output

  The results are in files in the ./results directory. These results
  can be compared with results in the ./expected directory using 'diff'.
  The files might not compare exactly. The following paragraphs attempt
  to explain the differences.

Error message differences

  Some of the regression tests involve intentional invalid input values.
  Error messages can come from either the Postgres code or from the host
  platform system routines. In the latter case, the messages may vary
  between platforms, but should reflect similar information. These
  differences in messages will result in a "failed" regression test which
  can be validated by inspection.

OID differences

  There are several places where PostgreSQL OID (object identifiers) appear
  in 'regress.out'. OID's are unique 32-bit integers which are generated
  by the PostgreSQL backend whenever a table row is inserted or updated.
  If you run the regression test on a non-virgin database or run it multiple
  times, the OID's reported will have different values. 

  The following SQL statements in 'misc.out' have shown this behavior:

  QUERY: SELECT user_relns() AS user_relns ORDER BY user_relns;

    The 'a,523676' row is composed from an OID.

DATE/TIME differences

  On many supported platforms, you can force PostgreSQL to believe that it
  is running in the same time zone as Berkeley, California. See details in
  the section on how to run the regression tests.

  If you do not explicitly set your time zone environment to PST8PDT, then
  most of the date and time results will reflect your local time zone and
  will fail the regression testing.

  There appears to be some systems which do not accept the recommended syntax
  for explicitly setting the local time zone rules. Some systems using the
  public domain time zone package exhibit minor problems with pre-1970 PDT
  times, representing them in PST instead.

FLOATING POINT differences

  Some of the tests involve computing 64-bit (FLOAT8) number from table
  columns. Differences in results involving mathematical functions of
  FLOAT8 columns have been observed. These differences occur where
  different operating systems are used on the same platform ie:
  BSDI and SOLARIS on Intel/86, and where the same operating system is
  used used on different platforms, ie: SOLARIS on SPARC and Intel/86.

  Human eyeball comparison is needed to determine the real significance
  of these differences which are usually 10 places to the right of
  the decimal point.

  Some systems signal errors from pow() and exp() differently from
  the mechanism expected by the current Postgres code.

POLYGON differences

  Several of the tests involve operations on geographic date about the
  Oakland/Berkley CA street map. The map data is expressed as polygons
  whose vertices are represented as pairs of FLOAT8 numbers (decimal
  latitude and longitude). Initially, some tables are created and
  loaded with geographic data, then some views are created which join
  two tables using the polygon intersection operator (##), then a select
  is done on the view. 

  When comparing the results from different platforms, differences occur
  in the 2nd or 3rd place to the right of the decimal point. The SQL
  statements where these problems occur are the folowing:

    QUERY: SELECT * from street;
    QUERY: SELECT * from iexit;

Random differences

  There is at least one test case in random.out which is intended to produce
  random results. This causes random to fail the regression testing.
  Typing "diff results/random.out expected/random.out" should produce only
  one or a few lines of differences for this reason, but other floating
  point differences on dissimilar architectures might cause many more
  differences. See the release notes below.

The 'expected' files

  The ./expected/*.out files were adapted from the original monolithic
  'expected.input' file provided by Jolly Chen et al. Newer versions of these
  files generated on various development machines have been substituted after
  careful (?) inspection. Many of the development machines are running a
  Unix OS variant (FreeBSD, Linux, etc) on Ix86 hardware.

  The original 'expected.input' file was created on a SPARC Solaris 2.4
  system using the 'postgres5-1.02a5.tar.gz' source tree. It was compared
  with a file created on an I386 Solaris 2.4 system and the differences
  were only in the floating point polygons in the 3rd digit to the right
  of the decimal point. (see below)

  The original 'sample.regress.out' file was from the postgres-1.01 release
  constructed by Jolly Chen and is included here for reference. It may
  have been created on a DEC ALPHA machine as the 'Makefile.global'
  in the postgres-1.01 release has PORTNAME=alpha.

Current release notes (Thomas.Lockhart@jpl.nasa.gov)

  The regression tests have been adapted and extensively modified for the
  v6.1 release of PostgreSQL.

  Three new data types (datetime, timespan, and circle) have been added to
  the native set of PostgreSQL types. Points, boxes, paths, and polygons
  have had their output formats made consistant across the data types.
  The polygon output in misc.out has only been spot-checked for correctness
  relative to the original regression output.

  PostgreSQL v6.1 introduces a new, alternate optimizer which uses "genetic"
  algorithms. These algorithms introduce a random behavior in the ordering
  of query results when the query contains multiple qualifiers or multiple
  tables (giving the optimizer a choice on order of evaluation). Several
  regression tests have been modified to explicitly order the results, and
  hence are insensitive to optimizer choices. A few regression tests are
  for data types which are inherently unordered (e.g. points and time
  intervals) and tests involving those types are explicitly bracketed with
  "set geqo to 'off'" and "reset geqo".

  The interpretation of array specifiers (the curly braces around atomic
  values) appears to have changed sometime after the original regression
  tests were generated. The current ./expected/*.out files reflect this
  new interpretation, which may not be correct!

  The float8 regression test fails on at least some platforms. This is due
  to differences in implementations of pow() and exp() and the signaling
  mechanisms used for overflow and underflow conditions.

  The "random" results in the random test should cause the "random" test
  to be "failed", since the regression tests are evaluated using a simple
  diff. However, "random" does not seem to produce random results on my 
  test machine (Linux/gcc/i686).

Sample timing results

  Timing under Linux 2.0.27 seems to have a roughly 5% variation from run
  to run, presumably due to the timing vagaries of multitasking systems.

  Time   System
  06:12  Pentium Pro 180, 32MB, Linux 2.0.30, gcc 2.7.2 -O2 -m486
  12:06  P-100, 48MB, Linux 2.0.29, gcc
  39:58  Sparc IPC 32MB, Solaris 2.5, gcc 2.7.2.1 -O -g