E.21. Release 12
Release date: 2019-10-03
E.21.1. Overview
Major enhancements in PostgreSQL 12 include:
-
General performance improvements, including:
-
Optimizations to space utilization and read/write performance for B-tree indexes
-
Partitioning performance enhancements, including improved query performance on tables with thousands of partitions, improved insertion performance with INSERT and COPY , and the ability to execute
ALTER TABLE ATTACH PARTITION
without blocking queries -
Automatic (but overridable) inlining of common table expressions ( CTEs )
-
Reduction of WAL overhead for creation of GiST , GIN , and SP-GiST indexes
-
Multi-column most-common-value (MCV) statistics can be defined via CREATE STATISTICS , to support better plans for queries that test several non-uniformly-distributed columns
-
-
Enhancements to administrative functionality, including:
-
REINDEX CONCURRENTLY
can rebuild an index without blocking writes to its table -
pg_checksums can enable/disable page checksums (used for detecting data corruption) in an offline cluster
-
Progress reporting statistics for CREATE INDEX , REINDEX , CLUSTER , VACUUM FULL , and pg_checksums
-
-
Support for the SQL/JSON path language
-
Stored generated columns
-
Nondeterministic ICU collations, enabling case-insensitive and accent-insensitive grouping and ordering
-
New authentication features, including:
-
Encryption of TCP/IP connections when using GSSAPI authentication
-
Discovery of LDAP servers using DNS SRV records
-
Multi-factor authentication, using the
clientcert=verify-full
option combined with an additional authentication method inpg_hba.conf
-
The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.
E.21.2. Migration to Version 12
A dump/restore using pg_dumpall or use of pg_upgrade or logical replication is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release. See Section 18.6 for general information on migrating to new major releases.
Version 12 contains a number of changes that may affect compatibility with previous releases. Observe the following incompatibilities:
-
Remove the special behavior of oid columns (Andres Freund, John Naylor)
Previously, a normally-invisible
oid
column could be specified during table creation usingWITH OIDS
; that ability has been removed. Columns can still be explicitly declared as typeoid
. Operations on tables that have columns created usingWITH OIDS
will need adjustment.The system catalogs that previously had hidden
oid
columns now have ordinaryoid
columns. Hence,SELECT *
will now output those columns, whereas previously they would be displayed only if selected explicitly. -
Remove data types
abstime
,reltime
, andtinterval
(Andres Freund)These are obsoleted by SQL-standard types such as
timestamp
. -
Remove the
timetravel
extension (Andres Freund) -
Move
recovery.conf
settings intopostgresql.conf
(Masao Fujii, Simon Riggs, Abhijit Menon-Sen, Sergei Kornilov)recovery.conf
is no longer used, and the server will not start if that file exists. recovery.signal andstandby.signal
files are now used to switch into non-primary mode. Thetrigger_file
setting has been renamed to promote_trigger_file . Thestandby_mode
setting has been removed. -
Do not allow multiple conflicting
recovery_target
* specifications (Peter Eisentraut)Specifically, only allow one of recovery_target , recovery_target_lsn , recovery_target_name , recovery_target_time , and recovery_target_xid . Previously, multiple different instances of these parameters could be specified, and the last one was honored. Now, only one can be specified, though the same one can be specified multiple times and the last specification is honored.
-
Cause recovery to advance to the latest timeline by default (Peter Eisentraut)
Specifically, recovery_target_timeline now defaults to
latest
. Previously, it defaulted tocurrent
. -
Refactor code for geometric functions and operators (Emre Hasegeli)
This could lead to more accurate, but slightly different, results compared to previous releases. Notably, cases involving NaN, underflow, overflow, and division by zero are handled more consistently than before.
-
Improve performance by using a new algorithm for output of
real
anddouble precision
values (Andrew Gierth)Previously, displayed floating-point values were rounded to 6 (for
real
) or 15 (fordouble precision
) digits by default, adjusted by the value of extra_float_digits . Now, wheneverextra_float_digits
is more than zero (as it now is by default), only the minimum number of digits required to preserve the exact binary value are output. The behavior is the same as before whenextra_float_digits
is set to zero or less.Also, formatting of floating-point exponents is now uniform across platforms: two digits are used unless three are necessary. In previous releases, Windows builds always printed three digits.
-
random()
andsetseed()
now behave uniformly across platforms (Tom Lane)The sequence of
random()
values generated following asetseed()
call with a particular seed value is likely to be different now than before. However, it will also be repeatable, which was not previously guaranteed because of interference from other uses of random numbers inside the server. The SQLrandom()
function now has its own private per-session state to forestall that. -
Change SQL-style
substring()
to have standard-compliant greediness behavior (Tom Lane)In cases where the pattern can be matched in more than one way, the initial sub-pattern is now treated as matching the least possible amount of text rather than the greatest; for example, a pattern such as
%#"aa*#"%
now selects the first group ofa
's from the input, not the last group. -
Do not pretty-print the result of
xpath()
or theXMLTABLE
construct (Tom Lane)In some cases, these functions would insert extra whitespace (newlines and/or spaces) in nodeset values. This is undesirable since depending on usage, the whitespace might be considered semantically significant.
-
Rename command-line tool pg_verify_checksums to pg_checksums (Michaël Paquier)
-
In pg_restore , require specification of
-f -
to send the dump contents to standard output (Euler Taveira)Previously, this happened by default if no destination was specified, but that was deemed to be unfriendly.
-
Disallow non-unique abbreviations in psql 's
\pset format
command (Daniel Vérité)Previously, for example,
\pset format a
chosealigned
; it will now fail since that could equally well meanasciidoc
. -
In new btree indexes, the maximum index entry length is reduced by eight bytes, to improve handling of duplicate entries (Peter Geoghegan)
This means that a REINDEX operation on an index pg_upgrade 'd from a previous release could potentially fail.
-
Cause
DROP IF EXISTS FUNCTION
/PROCEDURE
/AGGREGATE
/ROUTINE
to generate an error if no argument list is supplied and there are multiple matching objects (David Rowley)Also improve the error message in such cases.
-
Split the
pg_statistic_ext
catalog into two catalogs, and add thepg_stats_ext
view of it (Dean Rasheed, Tomas Vondra)This change supports hiding potentially-sensitive statistics data from unprivileged users.
-
Remove obsolete
pg_constraint
.consrc
column (Peter Eisentraut)This column has been deprecated for a long time, because it did not update in response to other catalog changes (such as column renamings). The recommended way to get a text version of a check constraint's expression from
pg_constraint
ispg_get_expr(conbin, conrelid)
.pg_get_constraintdef()
is also a useful alternative. -
Remove obsolete
pg_attrdef
.adsrc
column (Peter Eisentraut)This column has been deprecated for a long time, because it did not update in response to other catalog changes (such as column renamings). The recommended way to get a text version of a default-value expression from
pg_attrdef
ispg_get_expr(adbin, adrelid)
. -
Mark table columns of type name as having " C " collation by default (Tom Lane, Daniel Vérité)
The comparison operators for data type
name
can now use any collation, rather than always using " C " collation. To preserve the previous semantics of queries, columns of typename
are now explicitly marked as having " C " collation. A side effect of this is that regular-expression operators onname
columns will now use the " C " collation by default, not the database collation, to determine the behavior of locale-dependent regular expression patterns (such as\w
). If you want non-C behavior for a regular expression on aname
column, attach an explicitCOLLATE
clause. (For user-definedname
columns, another possibility is to specify a different collation at table creation time; but that just moves the non-backwards-compatibility to the comparison operators.) -
Treat object-name columns in the
information_schema
views as being of typename
, notvarchar
(Tom Lane)Per the SQL standard, object-name columns in the
information_schema
views are declared as being of domain typesql_identifier
. In PostgreSQL , the underlying catalog columns are really of typename
. This change makessql_identifier
be a domain overname
, rather thanvarchar
as before. This eliminates a semantic mismatch in comparison and sorting behavior, which can greatly improve the performance of queries oninformation_schema
views that restrict an object-name column. Note however that inequality restrictions, for exampleSELECT ... FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_name < 'foo';
will now use " C " -locale comparison semantics by default, rather than the database's default collation as before. Sorting on these columns will also follow " C " ordering rules. The previous behavior (and inefficiency) can be enforced by adding a
COLLATE "default"
clause. -
Remove the ability to disable dynamic shared memory (Kyotaro Horiguchi)
Specifically, dynamic_shared_memory_type can no longer be set to
none
. -
Parse libpq integer connection parameters more strictly (Fabien Coelho)
In previous releases, using an incorrect integer value for connection parameters
connect_timeout
,keepalives
,keepalives_count
,keepalives_idle
,keepalives_interval
andport
resulted in libpq either ignoring those values or failing with incorrect error messages.
E.21.3. Changes
Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between PostgreSQL 12 and the previous major release.
E.21.3.1. Server
E.21.3.1.1. Partitioning
-
Improve performance of many operations on partitioned tables (Amit Langote, David Rowley, Tom Lane, Álvaro Herrera)
Allow tables with thousands of child partitions to be processed efficiently by operations that only affect a small number of partitions.
-
Allow foreign keys to reference partitioned tables (Álvaro Herrera)
-
Improve speed of
COPY
into partitioned tables (David Rowley) -
Allow partition bounds to be any expression (Kyotaro Horiguchi, Tom Lane, Amit Langote)
Such expressions are evaluated at partitioned-table creation time. Previously, only simple constants were allowed as partition bounds.
-
Allow
CREATE TABLE
's tablespace specification for a partitioned table to affect the tablespace of its children (David Rowley, Álvaro Herrera) -
Avoid sorting when partitions are already being scanned in the necessary order (David Rowley)
-
ALTER TABLE ATTACH PARTITION
is now performed with reduced locking requirements (Robert Haas) -
Add partition introspection functions (Michaël Paquier, Álvaro Herrera, Amit Langote)
The new function
pg_partition_root()
returns the top-most parent of a partition tree,pg_partition_ancestors()
reports all ancestors of a partition, andpg_partition_tree()
displays information about partitions. -
Include partitioned indexes in the system view
pg_indexes
(Suraj Kharage) -
Add psql command
\dP
to list partitioned tables and indexes (Pavel Stehule) -
Improve psql
\d
and\z
display of partitioned tables (Pavel Stehule, Michaël Paquier, Álvaro Herrera) -
Fix bugs that could cause
ALTER TABLE DETACH PARTITION
to leave behind incorrect dependency state, allowing subsequent operations to misbehave, for example by not dropping a former partition child index when its table is dropped (Tom Lane)
E.21.3.1.2. Indexes
-
Improve performance and space utilization of btree indexes with many duplicates (Peter Geoghegan, Heikki Linnakangas)
Previously, duplicate index entries were stored unordered within their duplicate groups. This caused overhead during index inserts, wasted space due to excessive page splits, and it reduced
VACUUM
's ability to recycle entire pages. Duplicate index entries are now sorted in heap-storage order.Indexes pg_upgrade 'd from previous releases will not have these benefits.
-
Allow multi-column btree indexes to be smaller (Peter Geoghegan, Heikki Linnakangas)
Internal pages and min/max leaf page indicators now only store index keys until the change key, rather than all indexed keys. This also improves the locality of index access.
Indexes pg_upgrade 'd from previous releases will not have these benefits.
-
Improve speed of btree index insertions by reducing locking overhead (Alexander Korotkov)
-
Add support for nearest-neighbor ( KNN ) searches of SP-GiST indexes (Nikita Glukhov, Alexander Korotkov, Vlad Sterzhanov)
-
Reduce the WAL write overhead of GiST , GIN , and SP-GiST index creation (Anastasia Lubennikova, Andrey V. Lepikhov)
-
Allow index-only scans to be more efficient on indexes with many columns (Konstantin Knizhnik)
-
Improve the performance of vacuum scans of GiST indexes (Andrey Borodin, Konstantin Kuznetsov, Heikki Linnakangas)
-
Delete empty leaf pages during GiST
VACUUM
(Andrey Borodin) -
Reduce locking requirements for index renaming (Peter Eisentraut)
E.21.3.1.3. Optimizer
-
Allow CREATE STATISTICS to create most-common-value statistics for multiple columns (Tomas Vondra)
This improves optimization for queries that test several columns, requiring an estimate of the combined effect of several
WHERE
clauses. If the columns are correlated and have non-uniform distributions then multi-column statistics will allow much better estimates. -
Allow common table expressions ( CTEs ) to be inlined into the outer query (Andreas Karlsson, Andrew Gierth, David Fetter, Tom Lane)
Specifically, CTE s are automatically inlined if they have no side-effects, are not recursive, and are referenced only once in the query. Inlining can be prevented by specifying
MATERIALIZED
, or forced for multiply-referenced CTE s by specifyingNOT MATERIALIZED
. Previously, CTE s were never inlined and were always evaluated before the rest of the query. -
Allow control over when generic plans are used for prepared statements (Pavel Stehule)
This is controlled by the plan_cache_mode server parameter.
-
Improve optimization of partition and
UNION ALL
queries that have only a single child (David Rowley) -
Improve processing of domains that have no check constraints (Tom Lane)
Domains that are being used purely as type aliases no longer cause optimization difficulties.
-
Pre-evaluate calls of
LEAST
andGREATEST
when their arguments are constants (Vik Fearing) -
Improve optimizer's ability to verify that partial indexes with
IS NOT NULL
conditions are usable in queries (Tom Lane, James Coleman)Usability can now be recognized in more cases where the calling query involves casts or large
x
IN (array
) -
Compute
ANALYZE
statistics using the collation defined for each column (Tom Lane)Previously, the database's default collation was used for all statistics. This potentially gives better optimizer behavior for columns with non-default collations.
-
Improve selectivity estimates for inequality comparisons on
ctid
columns (Edmund Horner) -
Improve optimization of joins on columns of type
tid
(Tom Lane)These changes primarily improve the efficiency of self-joins on
ctid
columns. -
Fix the leakproofness designations of some btree comparison operators and support functions (Tom Lane)
This allows some optimizations that previously would not have been applied in the presence of security barrier views or row-level security.
E.21.3.1.4. General Performance
-
Enable Just-in-Time ( JIT ) compilation by default, if the server has been built with support for it (Andres Freund)
Note that this support is not built by default, but has to be selected explicitly while configuring the build.
-
Speed up keyword lookup (John Naylor, Joerg Sonnenberger, Tom Lane)
-
Improve search performance for multi-byte characters in
position()
and related functions (Heikki Linnakangas) -
Allow toasted values to be minimally decompressed (Paul Ramsey)
This is useful for routines that only need to examine the initial portion of a toasted field.
-
Allow
ALTER TABLE ... SET NOT NULL
to avoid unnecessary table scans (Sergei Kornilov)This can be optimized when the table's column constraints can be recognized as disallowing nulls.
-
Allow
ALTER TABLE ... SET DATA TYPE
changing betweentimestamp
andtimestamptz
to avoid a table rewrite when the session time zone is UTC (Noah Misch)In the UTC time zone, these two data types are binary compatible.
-
Improve speed in converting strings to
int2
orint4
integers (Andres Freund) -
Allow parallelized queries when in
SERIALIZABLE
isolation mode (Thomas Munro)Previously, parallelism was disabled when in this mode.
-
Use
pread()
andpwrite()
for random I/O (Oskari Saarenmaa, Thomas Munro)This reduces the number of system calls required for I/O.
-
Improve the speed of setting the process title on FreeBSD (Thomas Munro)
E.21.3.1.5. Monitoring
-
Allow logging of statements from only a percentage of transactions (Adrien Nayrat)
The parameter log_transaction_sample_rate controls this.
-
Add progress reporting to
CREATE INDEX
andREINDEX
operations (Álvaro Herrera, Peter Eisentraut)Progress is reported in the
pg_stat_progress_create_index
system view. -
Add progress reporting to
CLUSTER
andVACUUM FULL
(Tatsuro Yamada)Progress is reported in the
pg_stat_progress_cluster
system view. -
Add progress reporting to pg_checksums (Michael Banck, Bernd Helmle)
This is enabled with the option
--progress
. -
Add counter of checksum failures to
pg_stat_database
(Magnus Hagander) -
Add tracking of global objects in system view
pg_stat_database
(Julien Rouhaud)Global objects are shown with a
pg_stat_database
.datid
value of zero. -
Add the ability to list the contents of the archive directory (Christoph Moench-Tegeder)
The function is
pg_ls_archive_statusdir()
. -
Add the ability to list the contents of temporary directories (Nathan Bossart)
The function,
pg_ls_tmpdir()
, optionally allows specification of a tablespace. -
Add information about the client certificate to the system view
pg_stat_ssl
(Peter Eisentraut)The new columns are
client_serial
andissuer_dn
. Columnclientdn
has been renamed toclient_dn
for clarity. -
Restrict visibility of rows in
pg_stat_ssl
for unprivileged users (Peter Eisentraut) -
At server start, emit a log message including the server version number (Christoph Berg)
-
Prevent logging " incomplete startup packet " if a new connection is immediately closed (Tom Lane)
This avoids log spam from certain forms of monitoring.
-
Include the application_name , if set, in log_connections log messages (Don Seiler)
-
Make the walreceiver set its application name to the cluster name, if set (Peter Eisentraut)
-
Add the timestamp of the last received standby message to
pg_stat_replication
(Lim Myungkyu) -
Add a wait event for fsync of WAL segments (Konstantin Knizhnik)
E.21.3.1.6. Authentication
-
Add GSSAPI encryption support (Robbie Harwood, Stephen Frost)
This feature allows TCP/IP connections to be encrypted when using GSSAPI authentication, without having to set up a separate encryption facility such as SSL. In support of this, add
hostgssenc
andhostnogssenc
record types inpg_hba.conf
for selecting connections that do or do not use GSSAPI encryption, corresponding to the existinghostssl
andhostnossl
record types. There is also a new gssencmode libpq option, and a pg_stat_gssapi system view. -
Allow the
clientcert
pg_hba.conf
option to check that the database user name matches the client certificate's common name (Julian Markwort, Marius Timmer)This new check is enabled with
clientcert=verify-full
. -
Allow discovery of an LDAP server using DNS SRV records (Thomas Munro)
This avoids the requirement of specifying
ldapserver
. It is only supported if PostgreSQL is compiled with OpenLDAP .
E.21.3.1.7. Server Configuration
-
Add ability to enable/disable cluster checksums using pg_checksums (Michael Banck, Michaël Paquier)
The cluster must be shut down for these operations.
-
Reduce the default value of autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay to 2ms (Tom Lane)
This allows autovacuum operations to proceed faster by default.
-
Allow vacuum_cost_delay to specify sub-millisecond delays, by accepting fractional values (Tom Lane)
-
Allow time-based server parameters to use units of microseconds (
us
) (Tom Lane) -
Allow fractional input for integer server parameters (Tom Lane)
For example,
SET work_mem = '30.1GB'
is now allowed, even thoughwork_mem
is an integer parameter. The value will be rounded to an integer after any required units conversion. -
Allow units to be defined for floating-point server parameters (Tom Lane)
-
Add wal_recycle and wal_init_zero server parameters to control WAL file recycling (Jerry Jelinek)
Avoiding file recycling can be beneficial on copy-on-write file systems like ZFS .
-
Add server parameter tcp_user_timeout to control the server's TCP timeout (Ryohei Nagaura)
-
Allow control of the minimum and maximum SSL protocol versions (Peter Eisentraut)
The server parameters are ssl_min_protocol_version and ssl_max_protocol_version .
-
Add server parameter ssl_library to report the SSL library version used by the server (Peter Eisentraut)
-
Add server parameter shared_memory_type to control the type of shared memory to use (Andres Freund)
This allows selection of System V shared memory, if desired.
E.21.3.2. Streaming Replication and Recovery
-
Allow some recovery parameters to be changed with reload (Peter Eisentraut)
These parameters are archive_cleanup_command , promote_trigger_file , recovery_end_command , and recovery_min_apply_delay .
-
Allow the streaming replication timeout ( wal_sender_timeout ) to be set per connection (Takayuki Tsunakawa)
Previously, this could only be set cluster-wide.
-
Add function
pg_promote()
to promote standbys to primaries (Laurenz Albe, Michaël Paquier)Previously, this operation was only possible by using pg_ctl or creating a trigger file.
-
Allow replication slots to be copied (Masahiko Sawada)
The functions for this are
pg_copy_physical_replication_slot()
andpg_copy_logical_replication_slot()
. -
Make max_wal_senders not count as part of max_connections (Alexander Kukushkin)
-
Add an explicit value of
current
for recovery_target_timeline (Peter Eisentraut) -
Make recovery fail if a two-phase transaction status file is corrupt (Michaël Paquier)
Previously, a warning was logged and recovery continued, allowing the transaction to be lost.
E.21.3.3. Utility Commands
-
Add REINDEX
CONCURRENTLY
option to allow reindexing without locking out writes (Michaël Paquier, Andreas Karlsson, Peter Eisentraut)This is also controlled by the reindexdb application's
--concurrently
option. -
Add support for generated columns (Peter Eisentraut)
The content of generated columns are computed from expressions (including references to other columns in the same table) rather than being specified by
INSERT
orUPDATE
commands. -
Add a
WHERE
clause toCOPY FROM
to control which rows are accepted (Surafel Temesgen)This provides a simple way to filter incoming data.
-
Allow enumerated values to be added more flexibly (Andrew Dunstan, Tom Lane, Thomas Munro)
Previously,
ALTER TYPE ... ADD VALUE
could not be called in a transaction block, unless it was part of the same transaction that created the enumerated type. Now it can be called in a later transaction, so long as the new enumerated value is not referenced until after it is committed. -
Add commands to end a transaction and start a new one (Peter Eisentraut)
The commands are
COMMIT AND CHAIN
andROLLBACK AND CHAIN
. -
Add VACUUM and
CREATE TABLE
options to preventVACUUM
from truncating trailing empty pages (Takayuki Tsunakawa)These options are
vacuum_truncate
andtoast.vacuum_truncate
. Use of these options reducesVACUUM
's locking requirements, but prevents returning disk space to the operating system. -
Allow
VACUUM
to skip index cleanup (Masahiko Sawada)This change adds a
VACUUM
command optionINDEX_CLEANUP
as well as a table storage optionvacuum_index_cleanup
. Use of this option reduces the ability to reclaim space and can lead to index bloat, but it is helpful when the main goal is to freeze old tuples. -
Add the ability to skip
VACUUM
andANALYZE
operations on tables that cannot be locked immediately (Nathan Bossart)This option is called
SKIP_LOCKED
. -
Allow
VACUUM
andANALYZE
to take optional Boolean argument specifications (Masahiko Sawada) -
Prevent TRUNCATE ,
VACUUM
andANALYZE
from requesting a lock on tables for which the user lacks permission (Michaël Paquier)This prevents unauthorized locking, which could interfere with user queries.
-
Add EXPLAIN option
SETTINGS
to output non-default optimizer settings (Tomas Vondra)This output can also be obtained when using auto_explain by setting
auto_explain.log_settings
. -
Add
OR REPLACE
option to CREATE AGGREGATE (Andrew Gierth) -
Allow modifications of system catalogs' options using ALTER TABLE (Peter Eisentraut)
Modifications of catalogs'
reloptions
and autovacuum settings are now supported. (Setting allow_system_table_mods is still required.) -
Use all key columns' names when selecting default constraint names for foreign keys (Peter Eisentraut)
Previously, only the first column name was included in the constraint name, resulting in ambiguity for multi-column foreign keys.
E.21.3.4. Data Types
-
Update assorted knowledge about Unicode to match Unicode 12.1.0 (Peter Eisentraut)
This fixes, for example, cases where psql would misformat output involving combining characters.
-
Update Snowball stemmer dictionaries with support for new languages (Arthur Zakirov)
This adds word stemming support for Arabic, Indonesian, Irish, Lithuanian, Nepali, and Tamil to full text search .
-
Allow creation of collations that report string equality for strings that are not bit-wise equal (Peter Eisentraut)
This feature supports " nondeterministic " collations that can define case- and accent-agnostic equality comparisons. Thus, for example, a case-insensitive uniqueness constraint on a text column can be made more easily than before. This is only supported for ICU collations.
-
Add support for ICU collation attributes on older ICU versions (Peter Eisentraut)
This allows customization of the collation rules in a consistent way across all ICU versions.
-
Allow data type name to more seamlessly be compared to other text types (Tom Lane)
Type
name
now behaves much like a domain over typetext
that has default collation " C " . This allows cross-type comparisons to be processed more efficiently.
E.21.3.5. Functions
-
Add support for the SQL/JSON path language (Nikita Glukhov, Teodor Sigaev, Alexander Korotkov, Oleg Bartunov, Liudmila Mantrova)
This allows execution of complex queries on
JSON
values using an SQL -standard language. -
Add support for hyperbolic functions (Lætitia Avrot)
Also add
log10()
as an alias forlog()
, for standards compliance. -
Improve the accuracy of statistical aggregates like
variance()
by using more precise algorithms (Dean Rasheed) -
Allow
date_trunc()
to have an additional argument to control the time zone (Vik Fearing, Tom Lane)This is faster and simpler than using the
AT TIME ZONE
clause. -
Adjust
to_timestamp()
/to_date()
functions to be more forgiving of template mismatches (Artur Zakirov, Alexander Korotkov, Liudmila Mantrova)This new behavior more closely matches the Oracle functions of the same name.
-
Fix assorted bugs in XML functions (Pavel Stehule, Markus Winand, Chapman Flack)
Specifically, in
XMLTABLE
,xpath()
, andxmlexists()
, fix some cases where nothing was output for a node, or an unexpected error was thrown, or necessary escaping of XML special characters was omitted. -
Allow the
BY VALUE
clause inXMLEXISTS
andXMLTABLE
(Chapman Flack)This SQL-standard clause has no effect in PostgreSQL 's implementation, but it was unnecessarily being rejected.
-
Prevent
current_schema()
andcurrent_schemas()
from being run by parallel workers, as they are not parallel-safe (Michaël Paquier) -
Allow
RECORD
andRECORD[]
to be used as column types in a query's column definition list for a table function that is declared to returnRECORD
(Elvis Pranskevichus)
E.21.3.6. PL/pgSQL
-
Allow SQL commands and variables with the same names as those commands to be used in the same PL/pgSQL function (Tom Lane)
For example, allow a variable called
comment
to exist in a function that calls theCOMMENT
SQL command. Previously this combination caused a parse error. -
Add new optional warning and error checks to PL/pgSQL (Pavel Stehule)
The new checks allow for run-time validation of
INTO
column counts and single-row results.
E.21.3.7. Client Interfaces
-
Add connection parameter tcp_user_timeout to control libpq 's TCP timeout (Ryohei Nagaura)
-
Allow libpq (and thus psql ) to report only the
SQLSTATE
value in error messages (Didier Gautheron) -
Add libpq function
PQresultMemorySize()
to report the memory used by a query result (Lars Kanis, Tom Lane) -
Remove the no-display/debug flag from libpq 's
options
connection parameter (Peter Eisentraut)This allows this parameter to be set by postgres_fdw .
-
Allow ecpg to create variables of data type
bytea
(Ryo Matsumura)This allows ECPG clients to interact with
bytea
data directly, rather than using an encoded form. -
Add
PREPARE AS
support to ECPG (Ryo Matsumura)
E.21.3.8. Client Applications
-
Allow vacuumdb to select tables for vacuum based on their wraparound horizon (Nathan Bossart)
The options are
--min-xid-age
and--min-mxid-age
. -
Allow vacuumdb to disable waiting for locks or skipping all-visible pages (Nathan Bossart)
The options are
--skip-locked
and--disable-page-skipping
. -
Add colorization to the output of command-line utilities (Peter Eisentraut)
This is enabled by setting the environment variable
PG_COLOR
toalways
orauto
. The specific colors used can be adjusted by setting the environment variablePG_COLORS
, using ANSI escape codes for colors. For example, the default behavior is equivalent toPG_COLORS="error=01;31:warning=01;35:locus=01"
.
E.21.3.8.1. psql
-
Add CSV table output mode in psql (Daniel Vérité)
This is controlled by
\pset format csv
or the command-line--csv
option. -
Show the manual page URL in psql 's
\help
output for a SQL command (Peter Eisentraut) -
Display the IP address in psql 's
\conninfo
(Fabien Coelho) -
Improve tab completion of
CREATE TABLE
,CREATE TRIGGER
,CREATE EVENT TRIGGER
,ANALYZE
,EXPLAIN
,VACUUM
,ALTER TABLE
,ALTER INDEX
,ALTER DATABASE
, andALTER INDEX ALTER COLUMN
(Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, Tatsuro Yamada, Michaël Paquier, Tom Lane, Justin Pryzby)
E.21.3.8.2. pgbench
-
Allow values produced by queries to be assigned to pgbench variables (Fabien Coelho, Álvaro Herrera)
The command for this is
\gset
. -
Improve precision of pgbench 's
--rate
option (Tom Lane) -
Improve pgbench 's error reporting with clearer messages and return codes (Peter Eisentraut)
E.21.3.9. Server Applications
-
Allow control of log file rotation via pg_ctl (Kyotaro Horiguchi, Alexander Kuzmenkov, Alexander Korotkov)
Previously, this was only possible via an SQL function or a process signal.
-
Properly detach the new server process during
pg_ctl start
(Paul Guo)This prevents the server from being shut down if the shell script that invoked pg_ctl is interrupted later.
-
Allow pg_upgrade to use the file system's cloning feature, if there is one (Peter Eisentraut)
The
--clone
option has the advantages of--link
, while preventing the old cluster from being changed after the new cluster has started. -
Allow specification of the socket directory to use in pg_upgrade (Daniel Gustafsson)
This is controlled by
--socketdir
; the default is the current directory. -
Allow pg_checksums to disable fsync operations (Michaël Paquier)
This is controlled by the
--no-sync
option. -
Allow pg_rewind to disable fsync operations (Michaël Paquier)
-
Fix pg_test_fsync to report accurate
open_datasync
durations on Windows (Laurenz Albe)
E.21.3.9.1. pg_dump , pg_dumpall , pg_restore
-
When pg_dump emits data with
INSERT
commands rather thanCOPY
, allow more than one data row to be included in eachINSERT
(Surafel Temesgen, David Rowley)The option controlling this is
--rows-per-insert
. -
Allow pg_dump to emit
INSERT ... ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING
(Surafel Temesgen)This avoids conflict failures during restore. The option is
--on-conflict-do-nothing
. -
Decouple the order of operations in a parallel pg_dump from the order used by a subsequent parallel pg_restore (Tom Lane)
This allows pg_restore to perform more-fully-parallelized parallel restores, especially in cases where the original dump was not done in parallel. Scheduling of a parallel pg_dump is also somewhat improved.
-
Allow the extra_float_digits setting to be specified for pg_dump and pg_dumpall (Andrew Dunstan)
This is primarily useful for making dumps that are exactly comparable across different source server versions. It is not recommended for normal use, as it may result in loss of precision when the dump is restored.
-
Add
--exclude-database
option to pg_dumpall (Andrew Dunstan)
E.21.3.10. Source Code
-
Add CREATE ACCESS METHOD command to create new table types (Andres Freund, Haribabu Kommi, Álvaro Herrera, Alexander Korotkov, Dmitry Dolgov)
This enables the development of new table access methods , which can optimize storage for different use cases. The existing
heap
access method remains the default. -
Add planner support function interfaces to improve optimizer estimates, inlining, and indexing for functions (Tom Lane)
This allows extensions to create planner support functions that can provide function-specific selectivity, cost, and row-count estimates that can depend on the function's arguments. Support functions can also supply simplified representations and index conditions, greatly expanding optimization possibilities.
-
Simplify renumbering manually-assigned OIDs, and establish a new project policy for management of such OIDs (John Naylor, Tom Lane)
Patches that manually assign OIDs for new built-in objects (such as new functions) should now randomly choose OIDs in the range 8000-9999. At the end of a development cycle, the OIDs used by committed patches will be renumbered down to lower numbers, currently somewhere in the 4
xxx
range, using the newrenumber_oids.pl
script. This approach should greatly reduce the odds of OID collisions between different in-process patches.While there is no specific policy reserving any OIDs for external use, it is recommended that forks and other projects needing private manually-assigned OIDs use numbers in the high 7
xxx
range. This will avoid conflicts with recently-merged patches, and it should be a long time before the core project reaches that range. -
Build Cygwin binaries using dynamic instead of static libraries (Marco Atzeri)
-
Remove configure switch
--disable-strong-random
(Michaël Paquier)A strong random-number source is now required.
-
printf
-family functions, as well asstrerror
andstrerror_r
, now behave uniformly across platforms within Postgres code (Tom Lane)Notably,
printf
understands%m
everywhere; on Windows,strerror
copes with Winsock error codes (it used to do so in backend but not frontend code); andstrerror_r
always follows the GNU return convention. -
Require a C99-compliant compiler, and MSVC 2013 or later on Windows (Andres Freund)
-
Use pandoc , not lynx , for generating plain-text documentation output files (Peter Eisentraut)
This affects only the
INSTALL
file generated duringmake dist
and the seldom-used plain-textpostgres.txt
output file. Pandoc produces better output than lynx and avoids some locale/encoding issues. Pandoc version 1.13 or later is required. -
Support use of images in the PostgreSQL documentation (Jürgen Purtz)
E.21.3.11. Additional Modules
-
Allow
ORDER BY
sorts andLIMIT
clauses to be pushed to postgres_fdw foreign servers in more cases (Etsuro Fujita) -
Improve optimizer cost accounting for postgres_fdw queries (Etsuro Fujita)
-
Properly honor
WITH CHECK OPTION
on views that reference postgres_fdw tables (Etsuro Fujita)While
CHECK OPTION
s on postgres_fdw tables are ignored (because the reference is foreign), views on such tables are considered local, so this change enforcesCHECK OPTION
s on them. Previously, onlyINSERT
s andUPDATE
s withRETURNING
clauses that returnedCHECK OPTION
values were validated. -
Allow
pg_stat_statements_reset()
to be more granular (Haribabu Kommi, Amit Kapila)The function now allows reset of statistics for specific databases, users, and queries.
-
Allow control of the auto_explain log level (Tom Dunstan, Andrew Dunstan)
The default is
LOG
. -
Update unaccent rules with new punctuation and symbols (Hugh Ranalli, Michaël Paquier)
-
Allow unaccent to handle some accents encoded as combining characters (Hugh Ranalli)
-
Allow unaccent to remove accents from Greek characters (Tasos Maschalidis)
-
Add a parameter to amcheck 's
bt_index_parent_check()
function to check each index tuple from the root of the tree (Peter Geoghegan) -
Improve oid2name and vacuumlo option handling to match other commands (Tatsuro Yamada)
E.21.4. Acknowledgments
The following individuals (in alphabetical order) have contributed to this release as patch authors, committers, reviewers, testers, or reporters of issues.
Abhijit Menon-Sen |
Achilleas Mantzios |
Adam Berlin |
Adam Bielanski |
Aditya Toshniwal |
Adrien Nayrat |
Alan Jackson |
Albert Schabhuetl |
Aleksander Alekseev |
Alex Aktsipetrov |
Alex Kliukin |
Alex Macy |
Alexander Korotkov |
Alexander Kukushkin |
Alexander Kuzmenkov |
Alexander Lakhin |
Alexandra Ryzhevich |
Alexey Bashtanov |
Alexey Ermakov |
Alexey Kondratov |
Alexey Kryuchkov |
Alexey Stepanov |
Allison Kaptur |
Álvaro Herrera |
Alyssa Ross |
Amit Kapila |
Amit Khandekar |
Amit Langote |
Amul Sul |
Anastasia Lubennikova |
André Hänsel |
Andrea Gelmini |
Andreas Joseph Krogh |
Andreas Karlsson |
Andreas Kunert |
Andreas Scherbaum |
Andreas Seltenreich |
Andrei Yahorau |
Andres Freund |
Andrew Dunstan |
Andrew Fletcher |
Andrew Gierth |
Andrew Krasichkov |
Andrey Borodin |
Andrey Klychkov |
Andrey Lepikhov |
Andy Abelisto |
Anthony Greene |
Anthony Skorski |
Antonin Houska |
Arne Roland |
Arseny Sher |
Arthur Zakirov |
Ash Marath |
Ashutosh Bapat |
Ashutosh Sharma |
Ashwin Agrawal |
Aya Iwata |
Bartosz Polnik |
Basil Bourque |
Bernd Helmle |
Brad DeJong |
Brigitte Blanc-Lafay |
Bruce Klein |
Bruce Momjian |
Bruno Wolff |
Chapman Flack |
Chen Huajun |
Chris Travers |
Chris Wilson |
Christian Hofstaedtler |
Christoph Berg |
Christoph Moench-Tegeder |
Clemens Ladisch |
Colm McHugh |
Corey Huinker |
Craig Ringer |
Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker |
Daisuke Higuchi |
Daniel Fiori |
Daniel Gustafsson |
Daniel Vérité |
Daniel Westermann |
Daniel Wilches |
Darafei Praliaskouski |
Daryl Waycott |
Dave Cramer |
David Binderman |
David Fetter |
David G. Johnston |
David Rowley |
David Steele |
Davy Machado |
Dean Rasheed |
Derek Hans |
Derek Nelson |
Devrim Gündüz |
Dian Fay |
Didier Gautheron |
Dilip Kumar |
Dmitry Dolgov |
Dmitry Marakasov |
Dmitry Molotkov |
Dmitry Shalashov |
Don Seiler |
Donald Dong |
Doug Rady |
Edmund Horner |
Eduards Bezverhijs |
Elvis Pranskevichus |
Emanuel Araújo |
Emre Hasegeli |
Eric Cyr |
Erik Rijkers |
Ertugrul Kahveci |
Etsuro Fujita |
Eugen Konkov |
Euler Taveira |
Fabien Coelho |
Fabrízio de Royes Mello |
Feike Steenbergen |
Filip Rembialkowski |
Gaby Schilders |
Geert Lobbestael |
George Tarasov |
Georgios Kokolatos |
Gianni Ciolli |
Gilles Darold |
Greg Stark |
Grigory Smolkin |
Guillaume Lelarge |
Gunnlaugur Thor Briem |
Gurjeet Singh |
Hadi Moshayedi |
Hailong Li |
Hans Buschmann |
Haribabu Kommi |
Haruka Takatsuka |
Hayato Kuroda |
Heikki Linnakangas |
Hironobu Suzuki |
Hubert Lubaczewski |
Hugh Ranalli |
Ian Barwick |
Ibrar Ahmed |
Ildar Musin |
Insung Moon |
Ioseph Kim |
Isaac Morland |
Ivan Panchenko |
Jack Kelly |
Jacob Champion |
Jaime Casanova |
Jakob Egger |
Jakub Glapa |
Jakub Janecek |
James Coleman |
James Inform |
James Robinson |
James Sewell |
James Tomson |
Jan Chochol |
Jaroslav Sivy |
Jean-Christophe Arnu |
Jean-Marc Voillequin |
Jean-Pierre Pelletier |
Jeevan Chalke |
Jeevan Ladhe |
Jeff Davis |
Jeff Janes |
Jeremy Evans |
Jeremy Schneider |
Jeremy Smith |
Jerry Jelinek |
Jesper Pedersen |
Jianing Yang |
Jie Zhang |
Jim Nasby |
Jimmy Yih |
Joe Conway |
Joe Wildish |
Joerg Sonnenberger |
John Klann |
John Naylor |
Jonah Harris |
Jonathan S. Katz |
Jorge Gustavo Rocha |
José Arthur Benetasso Villanova |
Joshua D. Drake |
Juan José Santamaría Flecha |
Julian Hsiao |
Julian Markwort |
Julian Schauder |
Julien Rouhaud |
Jürgen Purtz |
Jürgen Strobel |
Justin Pryzby |
Kaiting Chen |
Karen Huddleston |
Karl Czajkowski |
Karl O. Pinc |
Keiichi Hirobe |
Keith Fiske |
Ken Tanzer |
Kenji Uno |
Kevin Grittner |
Kevin Hale Boyes |
Kieran McCusker |
Kirk Jamison |
Kohei KaiGai |
Konstantin Knizhnik |
Konstantin Kuznetsov |
Kristjan Tammekivi |
Kuntal Ghosh |
Kyle Samson |
Kyotaro Horiguchi |
Lætitia Avrot |
Lars Kanis |
Laurenz Albe |
Lim Myungkyu |
Liu Huailing |
Liudmila Mantrova |
Lloyd Albin |
Luca Ferrari |
Luis M. Carril |
Lukas Eder |
Lukas Fittl |
Madelaine Thibaut |
Madeleine Thompson |
Magnus Hagander |
Mahendra Singh |
Mai Peng |
Maksim Milyutin |
Maksym Boguk |
Malthe Borch |
Manuel Rigger |
Marco Atzeri |
Marco Slot |
Marina Polyakova |
Mario De Frutos Dieguez |
Marius Timmer |
Mark Chambers |
Mark Dilger |
Marko Tiikkaja |
Markus Winand |
Martín Marqués |
Masahiko Sawada |
Masao Fujii |
Mateusz Guzik |
Mathias Brossard |
Matt Williams |
Matthias Otterbach |
Matvey Arye |
Melanie Plageman |
Mi Tar |
Michael Banck |
Michael Davidson |
Michael Meskes |
Michael Paquier |
Michael Vitale |
Michel Pelletier |
Mikalai Keida |
Mike Palmiotto |
Mithun Cy |
Morgan Owens |
Murat Kabilov |
Nathan Bossart |
Nawaz Ahmed |
Neeraj Kumar |
Nick Barnes |
Nico Williams |
Nikita Glukhov |
Nikolay Shaplov |
Ning Yu |
Nishant Fnu |
Noah Misch |
Norbert Benkocs |
Noriyoshi Shinoda |
Oleg Bartunov |
Oleg Samoilov |
Oleksii Kliukin |
Ondrej Bouda |
Oskari Saarenmaa |
Pan Bian |
Patrick Francelle |
Patrick McHardy |
Paul A. Jungwirth |
Paul Bonaud |
Paul Guo |
Paul Martinez |
Paul Ramsey |
Paul Schaap |
Paul van der Linden |
Pavan Deolasee |
Pavel Oskin |
Pavel Raiskup |
Pavel Stehule |
Peifeng Qiu |
Peter Billen |
Peter Eisentraut |
Peter Geoghegan |
Peter Neave |
Petr Fedorov |
Petr Jelínek |
Petr Slavov |
Petru-Florin Mihancea |
Phil Bayer |
Phil Florent |
Philip Dubé |
Pierre Ducroquet |
Piotr Gabriel Kosinski |
Piotr Stefaniak |
Piotr Wlodarczyk |
Prabhat Sahu |
Quentin Rameau |
Rafael Castro |
Rafia Sabih |
Rahila Syed |
Rajkumar Raghuwanshi |
Rares Salcudean |
Raúl Marín Rodríguez |
Regina Obe |
Renaud Navarro |
Richard Guo |
Rick Otten |
Rikard Falkeborn |
RK Korlapati |
Robbie Harwood |
Robert Haas |
Robert Treat |
Robert Vollmert |
Roger Curley |
Roman Zharkov |
Ronan Dunklau |
Rui Hai Jiang |
Rushabh Lathia |
Ryan Lambert |
Ryo Matsumura |
Ryohei Nagaura |
Ryohei Takahashi |
Samuel Williams |
Sand Stone |
Sanyo Capobiango |
Satoru Koizumi |
Sean Johnston |
Serge Latyntsev |
Sergei Kornilov |
Sergey Pashkov |
Sergio Conde Gómez |
Shawn Debnath |
Shay Rojansky |
Sho Kato |
Shohei Mochizuki |
Shouyu Luo |
Simon Riggs |
Sivasubramanian Ramasubramanian |
Slawomir Chodnicki |
Stas Kelvish |
Stefan Kadow |
Stepan Yankevych |
Stephen Amell |
Stephen Frost |
Steve Rogerson |
Steve Singer |
Steven Winfield |
Surafel Temesgen |
Suraj Kharage |
Suresh Kumar R |
Takayuki Tsunakawa |
Takeshi Ideriha |
Takuma Hoshiai |
Tasos Maschalidis |
Tatsuo Ishii |
Tatsuro Yamada |
Teodor Sigaev |
Thom Brown |
Thomas Munro |
Thomas Poty |
Tillmann Schulz |
Tim Möhlmann |
Timur Birsh |
Tobias Bussmann |
Tom Cassidy |
Tom Dunstan |
Tom Gottfried |
Tom Lane |
Tomas Vondra |
Tushar Ahuja |
Ulf Adams |
Vaishnavi Prabakaran |
Victor Petrovykh |
Victor Wagner |
Victor Yegorov |
Vijaykumar Jain |
Vik Fearing |
Vlad Sterzhanov |
Vladimir Baranoff |
Vladimir Kriukov |
Wu Fei |
Yaroslav Schekin |
Yi Huang |
Yoshikazu Imai |
Yugo Nagata |
Yulian Khodorkovskiy |
Yuming Wang |
YunQiang Su |
Yuri Kurenkov |
Yusuke Egashira |
Yuzuko Hosoya |
Zhou Digoal |