PostgreSQL 17 Released with Incremental Backups, JSON Enhancement

PostgreSQL is an object oriented relational database. It is one of widely used database and it could be used as relational, Document database, Graph database, Vector database etc. It is multi-functional and works better in all environments. The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is working on lot of improvements and they have released PostgreSQL 17 version last week. 

This release of PostgreSQL adds significant overall performance gains, including an overhauled memory management implementation for vacuum, optimizations to storage access and improvements for high concurrency workloads, speedups in bulk loading and exports, and query execution improvements for indexes.

The latest release has notable improvements which include

Added support for a new internal memory structure for vacuum that consumes up to 20x less memory. This improves vacuum speed and also reduces the use of shared resources, making more available for your workload.

Improved the performance of queries with IN clauses that use B-tree indexes, the default index method in PostgreSQL.

SQL/JSON is part of the SQL:2023 standard, providing database developers with a powerful set of functions for interacting with JSON documents in a way that feels natural to those familiar with SQL. Added function JSON_TABLE() to convert JSON data to a table representation. Also added support for SQL/JSON constructors (JSON, JSON_SCALAR, JSON_SERIALIZE) and query functions (JSON_EXISTS, JSON_QUERY, JSON_VALUE). 

Logical Replication made easy, with this release users don't have to drop logical replication slots while upgrading to newer version.

Incremental backups can be created using pg_basebackup's new --incremental option. The new application pg_combinebackup allows manipulation of base and incremental file system backups.

The PostgreSQL foreign data wrapper (postgres_fdw), used to execute queries on remote PostgreSQL instances, can now push EXISTS and IN subqueries to the remote server for more efficient processing.

Allow EXPLAIN to report optimizer memory usage and SERIALIZE option helps to report the cost of converting data for network transmission

Added functions uuid_extract_timestamp() and uuid_extract_version() to return UUID information.