September’s CommitFest typically sees a decline in activity, but the recent version 18 CommitFest has proven to be an exception, showcasing a wealth of accepted patches and exciting new features. For those who may have missed the July CommitFest, a recap can be found here.
New Features and Enhancements
Among the noteworthy contributions are:
- Conflict detection and logging in logical replication
- Planner: no more 10000000000
- Planner: memory management and usage monitoring for temporary tuple storage
- Reading buffers during index backwards scan
- pg_upgrade: asynchronous operations in multiple databases
- Hash Join speed-up
- Faster text value processing in JSON
- Optimized numeric-type multiplication
- Optimized numeric-type division
- ANALYZE ONLY and VACUUM ONLY
- Improved checkpointer statistics
- pg_stat_statements: normalization of SET commands
- postgres_fdw_get_connections and remote connection status
- file_fdw: ignore format conversion errors
- New function has_largeobject_privilege
- Functions crc32 and crc32c
- Client-server protocol: report search_path changes to the client
- psql: support for named prepared statements
- pg_verifybackup: integrity verification for tar backups
One of the standout features is the conflict detection and logging in logical replication. This enhancement addresses the challenges posed by independent data changes on subscribers and publishers, which can lead to logical replication conflicts. The new logging tools provide visibility into these conflicts, allowing developers to monitor and manage them effectively.
Another significant update is the Planner: no more 10000000000, which removes the prohibitive constant that inflated the cost of sequential scans. This change allows the planner to make more informed decisions without artificial cost inflation, enhancing query performance.
In addition, improvements in memory management and usage monitoring for temporary tuple storage have been introduced. This update optimizes how temporary tuples are stored, leading to better performance and resource management.
Furthermore, the pg_upgrade tool now supports asynchronous operations across multiple databases, significantly speeding up the upgrade process. This enhancement, along with various performance optimizations for hash joins and numeric operations, demonstrates a commitment to improving the efficiency of PostgreSQL.
As the community continues to innovate, the latest features and enhancements from the CommitFest promise to elevate the PostgreSQL experience for developers and users alike.
