PostgreSQL 16 released!

PostgreSQL 16 Boosts Performance

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announced today the release of PostgreSQL 16, the latest version of the world’s most advanced open source database.

PostgreSQL 16 enhances performance with notable improvements in query parallelism, bulk data loading, and logical replication. This release includes many features for both developers and administrators, such as extended SQL/JSON syntax, new monitoring statistics for workloads, and more flexibility in defining access control rules for policy management.

“As relational database patterns evolve, PostgreSQL continues to achieve performance improvements in searching and managing data at scale,” said Dave Page, a member of the PostgreSQL Core Team. “PostgreSQL 16 provides users with more methods to scale their workloads both up and out, while offering new ways to gain insights and optimize how they manage their data.”

PostgreSQL, an innovative data management system known for its reliability and robustness, benefits from over 25 years of open source development by a global developer community and has become the preferred open source relational database for organizations of all sizes.

Performance Improvements

PostgreSQL 16 enhances the performance of existing PostgreSQL functionality through new query planner optimizations. In this latest release, the query planner can parallelize FULL and RIGHT joins, generate better-optimized plans for queries using aggregate functions with DISTINCT or ORDER BY clauses, utilize incremental sorts for SELECT DISTINCT queries, and optimize window functions for more efficient execution. It also improves RIGHT and OUTER “anti-joins,” enabling users to identify rows not present in a joined table.

This release includes improvements for bulk loading using COPY in both single and concurrent operations, with tests showing performance gains of up to 300% in some cases. PostgreSQL 16 adds support for load balancing in clients using libpq and enhances the vacuum strategy to reduce the need for full-table freezes. Additionally, PostgreSQL 16 introduces CPU acceleration with SIMD on both x86 and ARM architectures, resulting in performance improvements when processing ASCII and JSON strings, as well as executing array and subtransaction searches.

More details about the changes and enhancements can be found in the release announcement by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group.

Community and Popularity of PostgreSQL

Postgres is becoming a major player in the database world. A recent survey by Stack Overflow among 90,000 developers showed that PostgreSQL is now used more frequently than SQL Server. It’s only a matter of time before it surpasses MySQL as the leading open source relational database if the current growth trend continues.

No database platform develops and adapts to technical innovations as rapidly as PostgreSQL. This is not surprising given the size and collaborative nature of its evolving community. This extensive project significantly accelerates the growth and evolution of PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL 16 Release Notes

For more details, visit the community page for PostgreSQL 16.