Release 6.1

NOTE: This should include information based on Bruce's release summary.

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).