Issue #1006938 by dww, westwesterson: avoid PHP warnings in the PHP 4 XML parser caused by the relatively new XML data pieces produced at updates.drupal.org

#669554 by dww: reduce memory use of update module by only saving attributes update module needs from .info files

#644482 by hass (backport of #452936): use TRUNCATE to do full cache clearing, which results in a dramatic speed increase

#319033 by Ralf, Dave Reid, dww: modules could bubble up in the update status listing if having submodules which are earlier in alphabetical ordering

#499828 by Darren Oh, Dave Reid, dww: Wrong release dates were recorded on multi-module projects if deployed from CVS

#310139 by fonant, c960657, pwolanin: drupal_urlencode() and Drupal.encodeURIComponent was used to encode query strings and other components it should not have been used for

#243253 by Benjamin Melançon, dww: Update status should not attempt to request update data until a limit is reached. Fixed Drupal instances when drupal.org is down and gets less load on Drupal.org if data is not found.

#445748 by Dave Reid, dww: Fix module support for disabled module update status checking and do not track usage in that case.

#448268 by dww: Make sure that submitting the themes admin form clears out the update status cache, just like the modules admin form does.

#220592 by dww and pwolanin: Always use the database for caching in update module, so that drupal.org project data persists. Improves both local and drupal.org site performance.

#245990 follow up by Damien Tournoud, David_Rothstein, pwolanin: Move back to an internal URL check for HTTP request checking and make the request checking less intrusive on what requests can be accomplished

#267724 by cpugeniusmv, dww, maartenvg: Update module was not checking for new data when the cache was cleared, until the set time was elapsed. Now checks on cron after the cache was cleared.

#200028 by agentrickard, dww: cache more project module data, so there is less burden on Drupal when generating admin pages (performance)

#212921 by fgm: remove unused reference on update_process_info_list() parameter list, which causes strict warnings in PHP 5

#209242 by dww: local .info file changes (ie. updated code) was not taken properly into account in update module

- Patch #210140 by dww: fixed code comment: 'default_major' is now deprecated in favor of 'supported_majors'.

#197186 by dww, testing by catch, webernet, greggles: (critical security functionality) update.module did not inform users when their current release became revoked/not supported

#196535 by sun, chx, dww: check whether Drupal can issue HTTP requests at all, so we know that this is the cause of problems, not the remote host not responding.

#162788 by dww: allow contrib update_status to provide information on disabled modules and themes too