Hi, Attached is a copy of the first draft for the PG14 press release.
This brings together highlights of many of the features in the upcoming PostgreSQL 14 release while providing context on their significance. With the plethora of new features coming in PostgreSQL 14, it is challenging to highlight them all, but the idea is to give a glimpse of what to expect in the new release. Feedback on the release is welcome. However, please provide your feedback on the release no later than **Thu, Sep 23, 2021 @ 18:00 UTC**. Thanks, Jonathan
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group today announced the release of [PostgreSQL 14](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/release-14.html), the latest version of the world’s [most advanced open source database](https://www.postgresql.org/). PostgreSQL 14 brings a variety of features that help developers and administrators to deploy their data-backed applications. PostgreSQL continues to add innovations on complex data types, including more conveniences for accessing JSON and support for noncontiguous ranges of data. This latest release also adds to PostgreSQL's trend on improvements for high performance and distributed data workloads, with advances in support for connection concurrency, high-write workloads, query parallelism and logical replication. _Hold for quote_ [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org), an innovative data management system known for its reliability and robustness, benefits from over 25 years of open source development from a [global developer community](https://www.postgresql.org/community/) and has become the preferred open source relational database for organizations of all sizes. ### JSON Conveniences and Multiranges PostgreSQL has supported manipulating [JSON](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/datatype-json.html) data since the release of PostgreSQL 9.2, though retrieval of values used a unique syntax. PostgreSQL 14 now lets you [access JSON data using subscripts](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/datatype-json.html#JSONB-SUBSCRIPTING), e.g. a query like `SELECT ('{ "postgres": { "release": 14 }}'::jsonb)['postgres']['release'];` now works. This aligns PostgreSQL with commonly recognized syntax for retrieving information from JSON data. The subscripting framework added to PostgreSQL 14 can be generally extended to other nested data structures, and is also applied to the `hstore` data type in this release. [Range types](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/rangetypes.html), also first released in PostgreSQL 9.2, now have support for noncontiguous ranges through the introduction of the "[multirange](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/rangetypes.html#RANGETYPES-BUILTIN)". A multirange is an ordered list of ranges that are nonoverlapping, which allows for developers to write simpler queries for dealing with complex sequences of ranges. The range types native to PostgreSQL (dates, times, numbers) support multiranges, and other data types can be extended to use multirange support. ### Performance Improvements for Heavy Workloads PostgreSQL 14 provides a significant throughput boost on workloads that use many connections, with some benchmarks showing a 2x speedup. This release continues on the recent improvements the overall management of B-tree indexes by reducing index bloat on tables with [frequently updated indexes](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/btree-implementation.html#BTREE-DELETION). PostgreSQL 14 introduces the ability to [pipeline queries](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/libpq-pipeline-mode.html) to a database, which can significantly improve performance over high latency connections or for workloads with many small write (`INSERT`/`UPDATE`/`DELETE`) operations. As this is a client-side feature, you can use pipeline mode with any modern PostgreSQL database so long as you use the version 14 client. ### Enhancements for Distributed Workloads Distributed PostgreSQL databases stand to benefit from PostgreSQL 14. When using [logical replication](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/logical-replication.html), PostgreSQL can now stream in-progress transactions to subscribers, with significant performance benefits for applying large transactions on subscribers. PostgreSQL 14 also adds several other performance enhancements to the logical decoding system that powers logical replication. [Foreign data wrappers](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/sql-createforeigndatawrapper.html), used to work with federated workloads across PostgreSQL and other databases, can now leverage query parallelism in PostgreSQL 14. This release implements this ability in the [`postgres_fdw`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/postgres-fdw.html), the foreign data wrapper that interfaces with other PostgreSQL databases. In addition to supporting query parallelism, `postgres_fdw` can now also bulk insert data on foreign tables and import table partitions with the [`IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/sql-importforeignschema.html) directive. ### Administration and Observability PostgreSQL 14 extends its performance gains to its [vacuuming](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/routine-vacuuming.html) system. This release includes optimizations for reducing overhead from B-trees indexes and now allows autovacuum to analyze partitioned tables and propagate information to its parents. [`ANALYZE`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/sql-analyze.html), used to collect database statistics, now runs significantly faster in PostgreSQL 14 due to its own performance improvements. The choice of compression for PostgreSQL's [TOAST](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/storage-toast.html) system, which is used to store larger data like blocks of text or geometries, can [now be configured](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/runtime-config-client.html#GUC-DEFAULT-TOAST-COMPRESSION). PostgreSQL 14 adds LZ4 compression for TOAST columns while retaining support for `pglz` compression. PostgreSQL 14 adds several new features to help with monitoring and observability, including the ability to [track the progress of `COPY` commands](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/progress-reporting.html#COPY-PROGRESS-REPORTING), [write-ahead-log (WAL) activity](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-WAL-VIEW), and [statistics on replication slots](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-REPLICATION-SLOTS-VIEW). Enabling [`compute_query_id`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/runtime-config-statistics.html#GUC-COMPUTE-QUERY-ID) lets you uniquely track a query through several PostgreSQL systems, including [`pg_stat_activity`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-ACTIVITY-VIEW), [`EXPLAIN VERBOSE`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/sql-explain.html), and through several logging functions. ### SQL Performance, Conformance, and Convenience Query planning and execution benefit from enhancements in PostgreSQL 14. This release includes several improvements to PostgreSQL's query parallelism support, including better performance of parallel sequential scans, the ability for [`PL/pgSQL`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/plpgsql.html) to execute parallel queries when using the `RETURN QUERY` directive, and enabling [`REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/sql-refreshmaterializedview.html) to execute parallel queries. Additionally, queries that use nested loop joins may see performance benefits through additional caching that is added in PostgreSQL 14. The [extended systems](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/planner-stats.html#PLANNER-STATS-EXTENDED) includes many improvements in PostgreSQL 14, including the ability to apply extend statistics on expressions. Additionally, [window functions](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/functions-window.html) can now benefit from incremental sorts, a feature that was introduced in [PostgreSQL 13](https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/postgresql-13-released-2077/). [Stored procedures](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/sql-createprocedure.html), which allow for transaction control in a block of code, can now return data by using `OUT` parameters. PostgreSQL 14 introduces the ability to "bin", or align, timestamps to a particular interval using the [`date_bin`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/functions-datetime.html#FUNCTIONS-DATETIME-BIN) function. This release also adds the SQL conforming [`SEARCH`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/queries-with.html#QUERIES-WITH-SEARCH) and [`CYCLE`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/queries-with.html#QUERIES-WITH-CYCLE) directives to help with ordering and cycle detection for recursive [common table expressions](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/queries-with.html#QUERIES-WITH-RECURSIVE). ### Security Enhancements PostgreSQL 14 makes it convenient to assign read-only and write-only privileges to users on tables, views, and schemas using the `pg_read_all_data` and `pg_write_all_data` [predefined roles](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/predefined-roles.html). Additionally, this release now makes the standard compliant [`SCRAM-SHA-256`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/auth-password.html) password management and authentication system the default on new PostgreSQL instances. ### About PostgreSQL [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org) is the world's most advanced open source database, with a global community of thousands of users, contributors, companies and organizations. Built on over 30 years of engineering, starting at the University of California, Berkeley, PostgreSQL has continued with an unmatched pace of development. PostgreSQL's mature feature set not only matches top proprietary database systems, but exceeds them in advanced database features, extensibility, security, and stability. ### Links * [Download](https://www.postgresql.org/download/) * [Release Notes](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/release-14.html) * [Press Kit](https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/) * [Security Page](https://www.postgresql.org/support/security/) * [Versioning Policy](https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/) * [Follow @postgresql on Twitter](https://twitter.com/postgresql)
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