Postgres Pro Standard 13.18.1: release notes

E.1. Postgres Pro Standard 13.18.1

Release Date: 2024-11-27

E.1.1. Overview

This release is based on PostgreSQL 13.18 and Postgres Pro Standard 13.16.1. All improvements inherited from PostgreSQL 13.18 are listed in PostgreSQL 13.18 Release Notes. Other major changes and enhancements are as follows:

  • Added the ability to form the MergeAppend operation instead of Append, which allows omitting additional sorting needed to ensure that the data is in fact sorted. Now MergeAppend is formed specifying the columns to sort by. The new ability applies only when the enable_appendorpath option is set to ON.

  • Allowed transformation of correlated IN subqueries into joins.

  • Implemented the ability to dump the state of a single backend process by sending the dump signal.

  • Changed the error level to calculate the statistics on vacuum interrupts to ERROR (PGERROR) only. Calculating vacuum interrupts for the PANIC error level could cause unpredictable system behavior, and the statistics could not be calculated anyway because of the server crash.

  • Fixed a segmentation fault, which could occur while executing the COPY TO command when using the online_analyze module.

  • Fixed an issue to avoid potential stack overflow in scenarios involving a large number of subtransactions. Now when handling the process of committing a transaction, iteration is used instead of tail recursion.

  • Fixed a memory leak that could occur when the EXPLAIN command's output produced over 64 columns.

  • Fixed an issue where EXPLAIN ANALYZE showed incorrect counts of inserted and conflicted tuples during row inserts with conflicting primary keys when using ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING.

  • Fixed an issue that could slow down query execution. The reason was that the optimizer selected a suboptimal index due to the lack of its cost estimation after removing redundant clauses with the enable_appendorpath option set to ON.

  • Ended support for Ubuntu 23.10.

  • Upgraded aqo to provide the following enhancements and bugfixes:

    • Enhanced aqo wide search (aqo.wide_search = on) to utilize data from multiple neighbors simultaneously. Also, revised its interaction with aqo.min_neighbors_for_predicting to allow queries with fewer than the specified number of data samples to participate in wide search. Previously, such queries were excluded from consideration.

    • Fixed an array index out-of-bounds issue in the aqo smart statement timeout update logic, as well as incorrect statistics insertion into aqo_query_stats when the arrays were full.

  • Upgraded mamonsu to version 3.5.9, which provides optimizations and bug fixes. Notable changes are as follows:

    • Added support for systems where setuptools version greater than 67.7.2 is installed.

    • Ended the use of dotted user:group specification at the RPM pre-install stage.

  • Upgraded oracle_fdw to version 2.7.0.

  • Upgraded orafce to version 4.13.5.

  • Upgraded pg_filedump to version 17.1, which specifically fixed an issue that could cause pg_filedump to crash with a segmentation fault when handling incomplete pages.

  • Upgraded pg_portal_modify to version 0.3.4.

  • Upgraded pg_probackup to version 2.8.5, which provides the following optimizations and bug fixes:

    • Enabled the output of the version command in the JSON format using --format=json.

    • Added the --all option to the amcheck command, which allows performing all the checks in a single command.

    • Added support for the include parameter in the configuration file. The contents of the file specified in include gets added to the configuration file instead of this parameter.

    • Added a possibility to specify an individual number of threads for execution of a backup and its subsequent validation by specifying the --backup-threads and --validate-threads option, respectively.

    • Changed the priority of setting PGDATA and BACKUP_PATH. Now the values from the command-line options take precedence.

    • Added validation of WAL files for backups to be merged by the merge command.

    • An error message that was issued when the validate command run with the --wal option found an archive in the DEGRADED status has been replaced with a warning since backups in this status do not affect the restore correctness as a whole.

    • Fixed an issue that could occur if the command line was too long.

    • Fixed an issue that could occur during validation or restore when the PITR from a previous timeline was performed.

  • Upgraded pgpro_controldata to version 17.1.0.

  • Upgraded pgpro_stats to version 1.8, which supports Postgres Pro 17. Notable changes are as follows:

    • Updated pgpro_stats_statements and pgpro_stats_totals views to include fields added to pg_stat_statements. Related functions were updated accordingly.

    • Streamlined access to views and functions. Specifically, access to the pgpro_stats_archiver, pgpro_stats_vacuum_database, pgpro_stats_vacuum_tables, and pgpro_stats_vacuum_indexes views was granted to all users. Previously, these views required explicitly granting access rights. Access to execution of the pgpro_stats_trace_reset function, which could previously be executed by any user, was restricted to superusers.

    • Implemented an optimization that lowers the locking time in some cases when copying metrics from the local memory to the shared memory.

    • Eliminated an excessive check of holding the lock when accessing the hash table of session-tracing filters.

    • Fixed processing of the pgpro_stats.stats_temp_directory configuration parameter. Previously after the server restart for changes to this parameter value to take effect, the fatal error pfree called with invalid pointer could occur when processing this parameter.

    • Fixed an issue that could occur during session tracing and cause errors could not write file ""pg_stat/pgpro_stats_filters.trace.tmp"": No such file or directory. Concurrent writing from different sessions to a trace file is fixed now, so processes can write to the trace file in parallel without collisions.

  • Upgraded pgpro_pwr to version 4.7, which provides new features, optimizations and bug fixes. Notable changes are as follows:

    • A subsample feature to collect relatively fast changing data.

    • New report tables, specifically regarding session states.

    • Support for new Postgres Pro 17 statistics.

    • A possibility not to reset statistics of the statistics collecting extension during taking a sample.

    • The change of the type for the field that tracks transaction IDs in a certain table from xid to text. The use of the xid type could previously cause a failure of pg_upgrade when upgrading from Postgres Pro Standard to Postgres Pro Enterprise.

  • Upgraded pg_repack to version 1.5.1.

  • Upgraded pg_wait_sampling to provide tracking of subquery IDs and utility statements and to add the new pg_wait_sampling.sample_cpu parameter, which allows specifying the sampling mode that determines whether to perform sampling of on-CPU backends.

  • Upgraded PTRACK to prevent possible issues with PTRACK backups by setting the ptrack.map file for automatic deletion when PTRACK is disabled.

E.1.2. Migration to Version 13.18.1

If you are upgrading from Postgres Pro Standard based on the same PostgreSQL major version, it is enough to install the new version into your current installation directory.

ABI versions may change between minor releases of Postgres Pro. If this is the case, and you see the ABI mismatch error when trying to run your extension, make sure to install a new version of the extension supplied with a new release of Postgres Pro, or recompile your third-party extension to be able to use it with the current version of Postgres Pro.

If you take backups using pg_probackup and you have previously upgraded it to version 2.8.0 or 2.8.1, make sure to upgrade it to version 2.8.2 or higher and retake a full backup after upgrade, since backups taken using those versions might be corrupted. If you suspect that your backups taken with versions 2.8.0 or 2.8.1 may be corrupted, you can validate them using version 2.8.2.

When upgrading from Postgres Pro versions 13.2.1 or lower, rebuild indexes containing at least one included column of type for which the collation was defined in the table.

If you are upgrading from Postgres Pro versions 13.2.2 or lower and take PTRACK backups using pg_probackup, retake a full backup after upgrade.

When upgrading to Postgres Pro versions starting with 13.11.1, make sure to upgrade pg_probackup to version 2.6.3 or higher since lower versions are incompatible with these Postgres Pro versions.

To migrate from PostgreSQL or a Postgres Pro Standard release based on a previous PostgreSQL major version, see the instructions in Postgres Pro Standard 13.1.1 Release Notes.