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Our blog is where our Postgres Pro experts share their knowledge with the community. Blog posts cover a variety of topics, including Postgres internals, extensions and monitoring solutions.

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September 4   •   PostgreSQL

Postgres Professional, a developer of data management products, has released version 17.5.1 of its Postgres Pro Enterprise DBMS. The system now supports embedded analytics, offers automated database tuning, introduces a new backup technology, and much more.

September 4   •   PostgreSQL

Postgres Professional introduces a scheduled update to the Postgres Pro Enterprise Manager (PPEM) platform—a comprehensive administration and maintenance solution for Postgres Pro databases. The new release includes features for real-time infrastructure monitoring, performance bottleneck detection, and management of Patroni-based high-availability clusters.

September 4   •   PostgreSQL

Postgres Professional has issued updates for Postgres Pro Standard. Versions 13.21.1, 14.18.1, 15.13.1, 16.9.1 and 17.5.1 are now available for download and upgrade from the official repository.

Below is an overview of the fixes and enhancements that have been updated or newly introduced for 17.5.1 users.

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September 24, 2024   •   PostgreSQL

Since the PostgreSQL 17 RC1 came out, we are on a home run towards the official PostgreSQL release, scheduled for September 26, 2024.

Letʼs take a look at the patches that came in during the March CommitFest. Previous articles about PostgreSQL 17 CommitFests: 2023-07, 2023-09, 2023-11, 2024-01.

Together, these give an idea of what the new PostgreSQL will look like.

Reverts after code freeze

Unfortunately, some previously accepted patches didn't make it in after all. Some of the notable ones:

Now, letʼs get to the new stuff.

SQL commands

Performance

Monitoring and management

Server

Replication

Client applications

May 21, 2024   •   PostgreSQL

Spring is in full swing as we bring you the hottest winter news of the January Commitfest. Let’s get to the good stuff right away!

Previous articles about PostgreSQL 17: 2023-07, 2023-09, 2023-11.

  • Incremental backup
  • Logical replication: maintaining the subscription status when upgrading the subscriber server
  • Dynamic shared memory registry
  • EXPLAIN (memory): report memory usage for planning
  • pg_stat_checkpointer: restartpoint monitoring on replicas
  • Building BRIN indexes in parallel mode
  • Queries with the IS [NOT] NULL condition for NOT NULL columns
  • Optimization of SET search_path
  • GROUP BY optimization
  • Support planner functions for range types
  • PL/pgSQL: %TYPE and %ROWTYPE arrays
  • Jsonpath: new data conversion methods
  • COPY ... FROM: ignoring format conversion errors
  • to_timestamp: format codes TZ and OF
  • GENERATED AS IDENTITY in partitioned tables
  • ALTER COLUMN ... SET EXPRESSION
January 12, 2024   •   PostgreSQL

The November commitfest is ripe with new interesting features! Without further ado, let’s proceed with the review.

If you missed our July and September commitfest reviews, you can check them out here: 2023-07, 2023-09.

  • ON LOGIN trigger
  • Event triggers for REINDEX
  • ALTER OPERATOR: commutator, negator, hashes, merges
  • pg_dump --filter=dump.txt
  • psql: displaying default privileges
  • pg_stat_statements: track statement entry timestamps and reset min/max statistics
  • pg_stat_checkpointer: checkpointer process statistics
  • pg_stats: statistics for range type columns
  • Planner: exclusion of unnecessary table self-joins
  • Planner: materialized CTE statistics
  • Planner: accessing a table with multiple clauses
  • Index range scan optimization
  • dblink, postgres_fdw: detailed wait events
  • Logical replication: migration of replication slots during publisher upgrade
  • Replication slot use log
  • Unicode: new information functions
  • New function: xmltext
  • AT LOCAL support
  • Infinite intervals
  • ALTER SYSTEM with unrecognized custom parameters
  • Building the server from source
November 5, 2023   •   PostgreSQL

We continue to follow the news of the PostgreSQL 17 development. Let’s find out what the September commitfest brings to the table.

If you missed our July commitfest review, you can check it out here: 2023-07.

  • Removed the parameter old_snapshot_threshold
  • New parameter event_triggers
  • New functions to_bin and to_oct
  • New system view pg_wait_events
  • EXPLAIN: a JIT compilation time counter for tuple deforming
  • Planner: better estimate of the initial cost of the WindowAgg node
  • pg_constraint: NOT NULL constraints
  • Normalization of CALL, DEALLOCATE and two-phase commit control commands
  • unaccent: the target rule expressions now support values in quotation marks
  • COPY FROM: FORCE_NOT_NULL * and FORCE_NULL *
  • Audit of connections without authentication
  • pg_stat_subscription: new column worker_type
  • The behaviour of pg_promote in case of unsuccessful switchover to a replica
  • Choosing the disk synchronization method in server utilities
  • pg_restore: optimization of parallel recovery of a large number of tables
  • pg_basebackup and pg_receivewal with the parameter dbname
  • Parameter names for a number of built-in functions
  • psql: \watch min_rows
September 12, 2023   •   PostgreSQL

We continue to follow the news in the world of PostgreSQL. The PostgreSQL 16 Release Candidate 1 was rolled out on August 31. If all is well, PostgreSQL 16 will officially release on September 14.

What has changed in the upcoming release after the April code freeze? What’s getting into PostgreSQL 17 after the first commitfest? Read our latest review to find out!

PostgreSQL 16

For reference, here are our previous reviews of PostgreSQL 16 commitfests: 2022-07, 2022-09, 2022-11, 2023-01, 2023-03.

Since April, there have been some notable changes.

Let’s start with the losses. The following updates have not made it into the release:

Some patches have been updated:

...

July 12, 2023   •   PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL 14 Internals for print on demand

A quick note to let you know that the PostgreSQL 14 Internals book is now available for orders on a worldwide print-on-demand service. You can buy hardcover or paperback version. PDF is still freely available on our website.

May 25, 2023   •   PostgreSQL

The end of the March Commitfest concludes the acceptance of patches for PostgreSQL 16. Let’s take a look at some exciting new updates it introduced.

I hope that this review together with the previous articles in the series (2022-07, 2022-09, 2022-11, 2023-01) will give you a coherent idea of the new features of PostgreSQL 16.

As usual, the March Commitfest introduces a ton of new changes. I’ve split them into several sections for convenience.

Monitoring

  • pg_stat_io: input/output statistics
  • Counter for new row versions moved to another page when performing an UPDATE
  • pg_buffercache: new pg_buffercache_usage_counts function
  • Normalization of DDL and service commands, continued
  • EXPLAIN (generic_plan): generic plan of a parameterized query
  • auto_explain: logging the query ID
  • PL/pgSQL: GET DIAGNOSTICS .. PG_ROUTINE_OID

Client applications

  • psql: variables SHELL_ERROR and SHELL_EXIT_CODE
  • psql: \watch and the number of repetitions
  • psql:\df+ does not show the source code of functions
  • pg_dump: support for LZ4 and zstd compression methods
  • pg_dump and partitioned tables
  • pg_verifybackup --progress
  • libpq: balancing connections

Server administration and maintenance

  • initdb: setting configuration parameters during cluster initialization
  • Autovacuum: balancing I/O impact on the fly
  • Managing the size of shared memory for vacuum and analyze
  • VACUUM for TOAST tables only
  • The vacuum_defer_cleanup_age parameter has been removed
  • pg_walinspect: interpretation of the end_lsn parameter
  • pg_walinspect: pg_get_wal_fpi_info → pg_get_wal_block_info

Localization

  • ICU: UNICODE collation
  • ICU: Canonization of locales
  • ICU: custom rules for customizing the sorting algorithm

Security

  • libpq: new parameter require_auth
  • scram_iterations: iteration counter for password encryption using SCRAM-SHA-256

SQL functions and commands

  • SQL/JSON standard support
  • New functions pg_input_error_info and pg_input_is_valid
  • The Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex
  • New functions array_shuffle and array_sample
  • New aggregate function any_value
  • COPY: inserting default values
  • timestamptz: adding and subtracting time intervals
  • XML: formatting values
  • pg_size_bytes: support for "B"
  • New functions: erf, erfc

Performance

  • Parallel execution of full and right hash joins
  • Options for the right antijoin
  • Relation extension mechanism rework
  • Don’t block HOT update by BRIN index
  • postgres_fdw: aborting transactions on remote servers in parallel mode
  • force_parallel_mode → debug_parallel_query
  • Direct I/O (for developers only)

Logical replication

  • Logical replication from a physical replica
  • Using non-unique indexes with REPLICA IDENTITY FULL
  • Initial synchronization in binary format
  • Privileges for creating subscriptions and applying changes
  • Committing changes in parallel mode (for developers only)

...