How to get a row, and all of it’s dependencies?

This question was asked at least twice on some support channel. Getting a row is trivial: select * from table where id = ?. But what about dependencies – the rows that this exported row references?

Decided to take a look at this task.

Continue reading How to get a row, and all of it's dependencies?

SQL/JSON is postponed

Back in March and April I wrote couple of blogposts about upcoming new great feature – full SQL/JSON.

Unfortunately, as of today SQL/JSON has been reverted (removed from sources), both from development version 16, but also from “almost ready" version 15.

There is lengthy discussion about it which you can definitely read if you're so inclined (side note, I didn't catch it immediately, so for future me – RMT is Release Management Team.

Obviously the feature will make its comeback. Whether it will be in 16 or later – can't tell now, but it will definitely reappear.

Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – Documentation for SQL/JSON features

On 8th of April 2022, Andrew Dunstan committed patch:

Documentation for SQL/JSON features
 
This documents the features added in commits f79b803dcc, f4fb45d15c,
33a377608f, 1a36bc9dba, 606948b058, 49082c2cc3, 4e34747c88, and
fadb48b00e.
 
I have cleaned up the aggregate section of the submitted docs, but there
is still a deal of copy editing required. However, I thought it best to
have some documentation sooner rather than later so testers can have a
better idea what they are playing with.
 
Nikita Glukhov
 
Reviewers have included (in no particular order) Andres Freund, Alexander
Korotkov, Pavel Stehule, Andrew Alsup, Erik Rijkers, Zhihong Yu,
Himanshu Upadhyaya, Daniel Gustafsson, Justin Pryzby.
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/cd0bb935-0158-78a7-08b5-904886deac4b@postgrespro.ru
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/7e2cb85d-24cf-4abb-30a5-1a33715959bd@postgrespro.ru

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – Documentation for SQL/JSON features

Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – JSON_TABLE

On 4th of April 2022, Andrew Dunstan committed patch:

JSON_TABLE
 
This feature allows jsonb data to be treated as a table and thus used in
a FROM clause like other tabular data. Data can be selected from the
jsonb using jsonpath expressions, and hoisted out of nested structures
in the jsonb to form multiple rows, more or less like an outer join.
 
Nikita Glukhov
 
Reviewers have included (in no particular order) Andres Freund, Alexander
Korotkov, Pavel Stehule, Andrew Alsup, Erik Rijkers, Zhihong Yu (whose
name I previously misspelled), Himanshu Upadhyaya, Daniel Gustafsson,
Justin Pryzby.
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/7e2cb85d-24cf-4abb-30a5-1a33715959bd@postgrespro.ru

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – JSON_TABLE

Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – SQL/JSON query functions

On 29th of March 2022, Andrew Dunstan committed patch:

SQL/JSON query functions
 
This introduces the SQL/JSON functions for querying JSON data using
jsonpath expressions. The functions are:
 
JSON_EXISTS()
JSON_QUERY()
JSON_VALUE()
 
All of these functions only operate on jsonb. The workaround for now is
to cast the argument to jsonb.
 
JSON_EXISTS() tests if the jsonpath expression applied to the jsonb
value yields any values. JSON_VALUE() must return a single value, and an
error occurs if it tries to return multiple values. JSON_QUERY() must
return a json object or array, and there are various WRAPPER options for
handling scalar or multi-value results. Both these functions have
options for handling EMPTY and ERROR conditions.
 
Nikita Glukhov
 
Reviewers have included (in no particular order) Andres Freund, Alexander
Korotkov, Pavel Stehule, Andrew Alsup, Erik Rijkers, Zihong Yu,
Himanshu Upadhyaya, Daniel Gustafsson, Justin Pryzby.
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/cd0bb935-0158-78a7-08b5-904886deac4b@postgrespro.ru

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – SQL/JSON query functions

Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – IS JSON predicate

On 28th of March 2022, Andrew Dunstan
New Blog Post

Title: Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – IS JSON predicate

On 28th of March 2022, Andrew Dunstan committed patch:

IS JSON predicate
 
This patch intrdocuces the SQL standard IS JSON predicate. It operates
on text and bytea values representing JSON as well as on the json and
jsonb types. Each test has an IS and IS NOT variant. The tests are:
 
IS JSON [VALUE]
IS JSON ARRAY
IS JSON OBJECT
IS JSON SCALAR
IS JSON  WITH | WITHOUT UNIQUE KEYS
 
These are mostly self-explanatory, but note that IS JSON WITHOUT UNIQUE
KEYS is true whenever IS JSON is true, and IS JSON WITH UNIQUE KEYS is
true whenever IS JSON is true except it IS JSON OBJECT is true and there
are duplicate keys (which is never the case when applied to jsonb values).
 
Nikita Glukhov
 
Reviewers have included (in no particular order) Andres Freund, Alexander
Korotkov, Pavel Stehule, Andrew Alsup, Erik Rijkers, Zihong Yu,
Himanshu Upadhyaya, Daniel Gustafsson, Justin Pryzby.
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/cd0bb935-0158-78a7-08b5-904886deac4b@postgrespro.ru

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – IS JSON predicate

Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – SQL/JSON constructors

On 27th of March 2022, Andrew Dunstan committed patch:

SQL/JSON constructors
 
This patch introduces the SQL/JSON standard constructors for JSON:
 
JSON()
JSON_ARRAY()
JSON_ARRAYAGG()
JSON_OBJECT()
JSON_OBJECTAGG()
 
For the most part these functions provide facilities that mimic
existing json/jsonb functions. However, they also offer some useful
additional functionality. In addition to text input, the JSON() function
accepts bytea input, which it will decode and constuct a json value from.
The other functions provide useful options for handling duplicate keys
and null values.
 
This series of patches will be followed by a consolidated documentation
patch.
 
Nikita Glukhov
 
Reviewers have included (in no particular order) Andres Freund, Alexander
Korotkov, Pavel Stehule, Andrew Alsup, Erik Rijkers, Zihong Yu,
Himanshu Upadhyaya, Daniel Gustafsson, Justin Pryzby.
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/cd0bb935-0158-78a7-08b5-904886deac4b@postgrespro.ru

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – SQL/JSON constructors

Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – Introduce log_destination=jsonlog

On 17th of January 2022, Michael Paquier committed patch:

Introduce log_destination=jsonlog
 
"jsonlog" is a new value that can be added to log_destination to provide
logs in the JSON format, with its output written to a file, making it
the third type of destination of this kind, after "stderr" and
"csvlog".  The format is convenient to feed logs to other applications.
There is also a plugin external to core that provided this feature using
the hook in elog.c, but this had to overwrite the output of "stderr" to
work, so being able to do both at the same time was not possible.  The
files generated by this log format are suffixed with ".json", and use
the same rotation policies as the other two formats depending on the
backend configuration.
 
This takes advantage of the refactoring work done previously in ac7c807,
bed6ed3, 8b76f89 and 2d77d83 for the backend parts, and 72b76f7 for the
TAP tests, making the addition of any new file-based format rather
straight-forward.
 
The documentation is updated to list all the keys and the values that
can exist in this new format.  pg_current_logfile() also required a
refresh for the new option.
 
Author: Sehrope Sarkuni, Michael Paquier
Reviewed-by: Nathan Bossart, Justin Pryzby
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAH7T-aqswBM6JWe4pDehi1uOiufqe06DJWaU5=X7dDLyqUExHg@mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 15 – Introduce log_destination=jsonlog

Getting value from dynamic column in pl/PgSQL triggers?

Every so often, on irc, someone asks how to get value from column that is passed as argument.

This is generally seen as not possible, as pl/PgSQL doesn't have support for dynamic column names.

We can work around it, though. Are the workarounds usable, in terms of performance?

Continue reading Getting value from dynamic column in pl/PgSQL triggers?

Changes on explain.depesz.com – extracted query from auto-explain plans

Some time ago James Courtney reported missing functionality.

Specifically, when one uses auto-explain, logged explains contain query text. So, when such explain is then pasted on explain.depesz.com, it stands to reason that it should be able to extract the query on its own, without having to manually extract it and put it in query box.

It took me a while, but finally, got it working today. And you can see it in all four explain format:

Also, while I'm writing – it seems that somewhere next month, there will be 1 millionth plan uploaded to the site 🙂 Hope you all find it useful 🙂