Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [PHP4BETA] PHP 4.0.0 Release packaged

Hello Andrei,

On 19-May-00 13:24:02, you wrote:

>> Does that mean that http://bugs.php.net/version4/bugs.php 
>> isn't uptodate? The page lists 488 open bugs. 

>No software release is bug-free, unfortunately. :)

That's Microsoft's line of thinking.  However, Microsoft is money driven
and their market can't wait.  What's the rush here with PHP 4?

Last time I looked there were plenty of reproduceable bugs and if somebody
reported them is because they are affecting at least who reported them.

I have a note on Metabase manual that basically discourages the upgrade to
PHP 4 if you want to use it with PostgreSQL. It goes like this:

...

The Metabase PostgreSQL driver sets the PG_DATESTYLE environment variable
to assure that date column values are returned by PostgreSQL database
queries formatted with the ISO 8601 standard (YYYY-MM-DD).

Apparently, under at least release PHP 4 RC1, when a connection to
PostgreSQL server is established for a second time in the same script
execution, after it has been closed for the first time, the PG_DATESTYLE
environment variable is cleared, making PostgreSQL result fetching calls
return dates formatted in the PostgreSQL default date format, which usually
is not the format defined by ISO 8601 standard.  This makes the first two
tests fail.

The problem was reported to the PHP development team.  It does not seem to
exist in PHP 3 releases.

...

Personally, I would be glad to take this not out of Metabase manual, but I
will only do that if now non-alpha/beta version of PHP 4 is released with the
bug in question.  If a user relies in alpha/beta software its their risk
and it is their problem.  But if a final release is buggy, the user should
be aware of known bugs that may affecting that software that he develops.

The bug does not affect only Metabase/PostgreSQL/PHP 4 users.  But Metabase
has now over 1.200 unique users and the user base is growing up at almost
100 new users a week.  Not that all of them use PostgreSQL, but many do
because PostgreSQL is free, is shipped within most Linux distributions and
is transaction and sub-query capable and is generally much more SQL 92
compliant that other popular databases like MySQL.

I wonder if at least who ever is in charge of PostgreSQL support is going
to have a look at this (report 4320) before rushing into a needlessly buggy
version.


Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Web Programming Components using PHP Classes.
Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/[email protected]
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