PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 2 Released

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the second beta release of PostgreSQL 9.6 is available for download. This release contains previews of all of the features which will be available in the final release of version 9.6, including fixes to many of the issues found in the first beta. Users are encouraged to begin testing their applications against 9.6 beta 2.

Changes Since Beta1

Our users and contributors reported bugs against 9.6 beta 1, and some of them have been fixed in this release. This includes multiple fixes for failure and performance issues in parallel query. We urge our community to re-test to ensure that these bugs are actually fixed, including:

update most contrib extensions for parallel query

two fixes for pg_trgm (trigram) bugs

rewrite code to estimate join sizes for better performance

correct handling of argument and result datatypes for partial aggregation

fix lazy_scan_heap so that it won't mark pages all-frozen too soon

mark additional functions as parallel-unsafe

check PlaceHolderVars before pushing down a join in postgres_fdw

improve the situation for parallel query versus temp relations

don't generate parallel paths for rels with parallel-restricted outputs

make psql_crosstab plans more stable

finish loose ends for SQL ACCESS METHOD objects, including pg_dump

stop the executor if no more tuples can be sent from worker to leader

several pg_upgrade fixes to support new features

fix regression tests for phrase search

add new snapshot fields to serialize/deserialize functions

measure Bloom index signature-length reloption in bits, not words

many improvements to parallel regression tests

many documentation updates and clarifications

multiple translation updates for the docs

Additionally, we've made some user-visible changes to parameters and functions. These may cause dump/restore between beta 1 and beta 2 to generate errors. This includes:

rename max_parallel_degree to max_parallel_workers_per_gather

add integrity-checking functions to pg_visibility

add VACUUM (DISABLE_PAGE_SKIPPING) for emergencies

add pg_truncate_visibility_map function

add min_parallel_relation_size GUC

change default of backend_flush_after GUC to 0 (disabled)

Note that some known issues remain unfixed. Before reporting a bug in the beta, please check the Open Items page.

Beta Schedule

This is the second beta release of version 9.6. The PostgreSQL Project will release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more release candidates, until the final release in late 2016. For further information please see the Beta Testing page.

Links