Allow logical decoding on standbys (Bertrand Drouvot, Andres Freund, Amit Khandekar)

Snapshot WAL records are required for logical slot creation but cannot be created on standbys. To avoid delays, the new function pg_log_standby_snapshot() allows creation of such records.

Add server variable to control how logical decoding publishers transfer changes and how subscribers apply them (Shi Yu)

The variable is debug_logical_replication_streaming.

Allow logical replication initial table synchronization to copy rows in binary format (Melih Mutlu)

This is only possible for subscriptions marked as binary.

Allow parallel application of logical replication (Hou Zhijie, Wang Wei, Amit Kapila)

The CREATE SUBSCRIPTION STREAMING option now supports parallel to enable application of large transactions by parallel workers. The number of parallel workers is controlled by the new server variable max_parallel_apply_workers_per_subscription. Wait events LogicalParallelApplyMain, LogicalParallelApplyStateChange, and LogicalApplySendData were also added. Column leader_pid was added to system view pg_stat_subscription to track parallel activity.

Improve performance for logical replication apply without a primary key (Onder Kalaci, Amit Kapila)

Specifically, REPLICA IDENTITY FULL can now use btree indexes rather than sequentially scanning the table to find matches.

Allow logical replication subscribers to process only changes that have no origin (Vignesh C, Amit Kapila)

This can be used to avoid replication loops. This is controlled by the new CREATE SUBSCRIPTION ... ORIGIN option.

Perform logical replication SELECT and DML actions as the table owner (Robert Haas)

This improves security and now requires subscription owners to be either superusers or to have SET ROLE permission on all roles owning tables in the replication set. The previous behavior of performing all operations as the subscription owner can be enabled with the subscription run_as_owner option.

Have wal_retrieve_retry_interval operate on a per-subscription basis (Nathan Bossart)

Previously the retry time was applied globally. This also adds wait events >LogicalRepLauncherDSA and LogicalRepLauncherHash.

Add EXPLAIN option GENERIC_PLAN to display the generic plan for a parameterized query (Laurenz Albe)

Allow a COPY FROM value to map to a column's DEFAULT (Israel Barth Rubio)

Allow COPY into foreign tables to add rows in batches (Andrey Lepikhov, Etsuro Fujita)

This is controlled by the postgres_fdw option batch_size.

Allow the STORAGE type to be specified by CREATE TABLE (Teodor Sigaev, Aleksander Alekseev)

Previously only ALTER TABLE could control this.

Allow truncate triggers on foreign tables (Yugo Nagata)

Allow VACUUM and vacuumdb to only process TOAST tables (Nathan Bossart)

This is accomplished by having VACUUM turn off PROCESS_MAIN or by vacuumdb using the --no-process-main option.

Add VACUUM options to skip or update all frozen statistics (Tom Lane, Nathan Bossart)

The options are SKIP_DATABASE_STATS and ONLY_DATABASE_STATS.

Change REINDEX DATABASE and REINDEX SYSTEM to no longer require an argument (Simon Riggs)

Previously the database name had to be specified.

Allow CREATE STATISTICS to generate a statistics name if none is specified (Simon Riggs)

Allow non-decimal integer literals (Peter Eisentraut)

For example, 0x42F, 0o273, and 0b100101.

Allow NUMERIC to process hexadecimal, octal, and binary integers of any size (Dean Rasheed)

Previously only unquoted eight-byte integers were supported with these non-decimal bases.

Allow underscores in integer and numeric constants (Peter Eisentraut, Dean Rasheed)

This can improve readability for long strings of digits.

Accept the spelling +infinity in datetime input (Vik Fearing)

Prevent the specification of epoch and infinity together with other fields in datetime strings (Joseph Koshakow)

Remove undocumented support for date input in the form YyearMmonthDday (Joseph Koshakow)

Add functions pg_input_is_valid() and pg_input_error_info() to check for type conversion errors (Tom Lane)

Allow subqueries in the FROM clause to omit aliases (Dean Rasheed)

Add support for enhanced numeric literals in SQL/JSON paths (Peter Eisentraut)

For example, allow hexadecimal, octal, and binary integers and underscores between digits.

Add SQL/JSON constructors (Nikita Glukhov, Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov, Alexander Korotkov, Amit Langote)

The new functions JSON_ARRAY(), JSON_ARRAYAGG(), JSON_OBJECT(), and JSON_OBJECTAGG() are part of the SQL standard.

Add SQL/JSON object checks (Nikita Glukhov, Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov, Alexander Korotkov, Amit Langote, Andrew Dunstan)

The IS JSON checks include checks for values, arrays, objects, scalars, and unique keys.

Allow JSON string parsing to use vector operations (John Naylor)

Improve the handling of full text highlighting function ts_headline() for OR and NOT expressions (Tom Lane)

Add functions to add, subtract, and generate timestamptz values in a specified time zone (Przemyslaw Sztoch, Gurjeet Singh)

The functions are date_add(), date_subtract(), and generate_series().

Change date_trunc(unit, timestamptz, time_zone) to be an immutable function (Przemyslaw Sztoch)

This allows the creation of expression indexes using this function.

Add server variable SYSTEM_USER (Bertrand Drouvot)

This reports the authentication method and its authenticated user.

Add functions array_sample() and array_shuffle() (Martin Kalcher)

Add aggregate function ANY_VALUE() which returns any value from a set (Vik Fearing)

Add function random_normal() to supply normally-distributed random numbers (Paul Ramsey)

Add error function erf() and its complement erfc() (Dean Rasheed)

Improve the accuracy of numeric power() for integer exponents (Dean Rasheed)

Add XMLSERIALIZE() option INDENT to pretty-print its output (Jim Jones)

Change pg_collation_actual_version() to return a reasonable value for the default collation (Jeff Davis)

Previously it returned NULL.

Allow pg_read_file() and pg_read_binary_file() to ignore missing files (Kyotaro Horiguchi)

Add byte specification (B) to pg_size_bytes() (Peter Eisentraut)

Allow to_reg* functions to accept numeric OIDs as input (Tom Lane)

Add the ability to get the current function's OID in PL/pgSQL (Pavel Stehule)

This is accomplished with GET DIAGNOSTICS variable = PG_ROUTINE_OID.

Add libpq connection option require_auth to specify a list of acceptable authentication methods (Jacob Champion)

This can also be used to disallow certain authentication methods.

Allow multiple libpq-specified hosts to be randomly selected (Jelte Fennema)

This is enabled with load_balance_hosts=random and can be used for load balancing.

Add libpq option sslcertmode to control transmission of the client certificate (Jacob Champion)

The option values are disable, allow, and require.

Allow libpq to use the system certificate pool for certificate verification (Jacob Champion, Thomas Habets)

This is enabled with sslrootcert=system, which also enables sslmode=verify-full.

Allow ECPG variable declarations to use typedef names that match unreserved SQL keywords (Tom Lane)

This change does prevent keywords which match C typedef names from being processed as keywords in later EXEC SQL blocks.

Add initdb option to set server variables for the duration of initdb and all future server starts (Tom Lane)

The option is -c name=value.

Add options to createuser to control more user options (Shinya Kato)

Specifically, the new options control the valid-until date, bypassing of row-level security, and role membership.

Deprecate createuser option --role (Nathan Bossart)

This option could be easily confused with new createuser role membership options, so option --member-of has been added with the same functionality. The --role option can still be used.

Allow control of vacuumdb schema processing (Gilles Darold)

These are controlled by options --schema and --exclude-schema.

Use new VACUUM options to improve the performance of vacuumdb (Tom Lane, Nathan Bossart)

Have pg_upgrade set the new cluster's locale and encoding (Jeff Davis)

This removes the requirement that the new cluster be created with the same locale and encoding settings.

Add pg_upgrade option to specify the default transfer mode (Peter Eisentraut)

The option is --copy.

Improve pg_basebackup to accept numeric compression options (Georgios Kokolatos, Michael Paquier)

Options like --compress=server-5 are now supported.

Fix pg_basebackup to handle tablespaces stored in the PGDATA directory (Robert Haas)

Add pg_waldump option --save-fullpage to dump full page images (David Christensen)

Allow pg_waldump options -t/--timeline to accept hexadecimal values (Peter Eisentraut)

Add support for progress reporting to pg_verifybackup (Masahiko Sawada)

Allow pg_rewind to properly track timeline changes (Heikki Linnakangas)

Previously if pg_rewind was run after a timeline switch but before a checkpoint was issued, it might incorrectly determine that a rewind was unnecessary.

Have pg_receivewal and pg_recvlogical cleanly exit on SIGTERM (Christoph Berg)

This signal is often used by systemd.

Build ICU support by default (Jeff Davis)

This removes build flag --with-icu and adds flag --without-icu.

Add support for SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2) vector operations on x86-64 architectures (John Naylor)

Add support for Advanced SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) (NEON) instructions on ARM architectures (Nathan Bossart)

Have Windows binaries built with MSVC use RandomizedBaseAddress (ASLR) (Michael Paquier)

This was already enabled on MinGW builds.

Prevent extension libraries from exporting their symbols by default (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

Functions that need to be called from the core backend or other extensions must now be explicitly marked PGDLLEXPORT.

Require Windows 10 or newer versions (Michael Paquier, Juan José Santamaría Flecha)

Previously Windows Vista and Windows XP were supported.

Require Perl version 5.14 or later (John Naylor)

Require Bison version 2.3 or later (John Naylor)

Require Flex version 2.5.35 or later (John Naylor)

Require MIT Kerberos for GSSAPI support (Stephen Frost)

Remove support for Visual Studio 2013 (Michael Paquier)

Remove support for HP-UX (Thomas Munro)

Remove support for HP/Intel Itanium (Thomas Munro)

Remove support for M68K, M88K, M32R, and SuperH CPU architectures (Thomas Munro)

Remove libpq support for SCM credential authentication (Michael Paquier)

Backend support for this authentication method was removed in PostgresSQL 9.1.

Add meson build system (Andres Freund, Nazir Bilal Yavuz, Peter Eisentraut)

This eventually will replace the Autoconf and Windows-based MSVC build systems.

Allow control of the location of the openssl binary used by the build system (Peter Eisentraut)

Make finding openssl program a configure or meson option

Add build option to allow testing of small table segment sizes (Andres Freund)

The build options are --with-segsize-blocks and -Dsegsize_blocks.

Add pgindent options (Andrew Dunstan)

The new options are --show-diff, --silent-diff, --commit, and --help, and allow multiple --exclude options. Also require the typedef file to be explicitly specified. Options --code-base and --build were also removed.

Add pg_bsd_indent source code to the main tree (Tom Lane)

Improve make_ctags and make_etags (Yugo Nagata)

Adjust pg_attribute columns for efficiency (Peter Eisentraut)

Improve use of extension-based indexes on boolean columns (Zongliang Quan, Tom Lane)

Add support for Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex to fuzzystrmatch (Dag Lem)

Allow auto_explain to log values passed to parameterized statements (Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker)

This affects queries using server-side PREPARE/EXECUTE and client-side parse/bind. Logging is controlled by auto_explain.log_parameter_max_length; by default query parameters will be logged with no length restriction.

Have auto_explain's log_verbose mode honor the value of compute_query_id (Atsushi Torikoshi)

Previously even if compute_query_id was enabled, log_verbose was not showing the query identifier.

Change the maximum length of ltree labels from 256 to 1000 and allow hyphens (Garen Torikian)

Have pg_stat_statements normalize constants used in utility commands (Michael Paquier)

Previously constants appeared instead of placeholders, e.g., $1.

Add pg_walinspect function pg_get_wal_block_info() to report WAL block information (Michael Paquier, Melanie Plageman, Bharath Rupireddy)

Change how pg_walinspect functions pg_get_wal_records_info() and pg_get_wal_stats() interpret ending LSNs (Bharath Rupireddy)

Previously ending LSNs which represent nonexistent WAL locations would generate an error, while they will now be interpreted as the end of the WAL.

Add detailed descriptions of WAL records in pg_walinspect and pg_waldump (Melanie Plageman, Peter Geoghegan)

Add pageinspect function bt_multi_page_stats() to report statistics on multiple pages (Hamid Akhtar)

This is similar to bt_page_stats() except it can report on a range of pages.

Add empty range output column to pageinspect function brin_page_items() (Tomas Vondra)

Redesign archive modules to be more flexible (Nathan Bossart)

Initialization changes will require modules written for older versions of Postgres to be updated.

Correct inaccurate pg_stat_statements row tracking extended query protocol statements (Sami Imseih)

Add pg_buffercache function pg_buffercache_usage_counts() to report usage totals (Nathan Bossart)

Add pg_buffercache function pg_buffercache_summary() to report summarized buffer statistics (Melih Mutlu)

Allow the schemas of required extensions to be referenced in extension scripts using the new syntax @extschema:referenced_extension_name@ (Regina Obe)

Allow required extensions to be marked as non-relocatable using no_relocate (Regina Obe)

This allows @extschema:referenced_extension_name@ to be treated as a constant for the lifetime of the extension.