What's new in PostgreSQL 9.4

Modern Database

Wealth of Detail Improvements

Many of the improvements in the new PostgreSQL 9.4 are found under the hood. Scalability for parallel writes, for example, has been improved significantly. Transactions can now write to the transaction log buffer simultaneously without having to wait for a lock. GIN indexes have been reduced significantly in size, and access to these indices with several indexed columns has been accelerated.

Furthermore, improvements have been made to the execution time of aggregate functions that use NUMERIC values. Additionally, the database's memory consumption has been significantly reduced even for single database connections, allowing for better speed for connections with very few tables, but also for those with many tables. A new system view pg_stat_archiver now provides information about the archiving status of transaction logs, thus facilitating the monitoring of systems with WAL assurance.

Conclusions

This article provides just a brief overview of the new functions in PostgreSQL 9.4 and only touches the surface of many of the new functions. Anyone who is interested in a detailed description of all of the new features should read the detailed PostgreSQL documentation.

The new version underlines the claim by PostgreSQL that it is the most advanced free database system and is definitely worth a close look, especially by newcomers. PostgreSQL has already found a wide user base in critical business areas, and version 9.4 will advance this further.

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