PostgreSQL 13 beta 1 released for testing

PostgreSQL 13 Beta 1 Released for Testing

PostgreSQL 13 Beta 1 was released on 21 May 2020 and is available for download for evaluation. This is the first beta release of version 13 and PostgreSQL Project will release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more release candidates, until the final release in late 2020.

The new features are added in the new release which will improve the overall performance of PostgreSQL while making it even easier to develop applications.

PostgreSQL 13 Feature Highlights

 Functionality

1. B-tree indexes – Improvements in handling the duplicate data which help to shrink index size and improve lookup speed, particularly for indexes that contain repeated values.
2. Incremental sorting capabilities –To get better planning and performance gains.
3. Improved partitioning functionality – To improve overall query execution time.
4. Added features like FETCH FIRST WITH TIES– To make more convenience while writing queries.

Administration

1. Introduction of the concept of a “trusted extension”, which allows for a superuser to specify extensions that a user can install in their database so long as they have a CREATE
2. The ability for the VACUUMcommand to process indexes in parallel.
3. Added parallelism for the reindexdb
4. Tracking of WAL usage statistics and the progress of streaming base backups and ANALYZE

Security

1. Several new parameters included in the connection library libpq to help secure connections.
2. Introduction of the channel_bindingconnection parameters, which lets a client specify that they want to require the channel binding functionality as part of SCRAM.
3. Added support for DER encoded certificates
4. Permits using the sslpasswordparameter while specifying passwords in TLS certificate.

Other Highlights

1. Improvement inoperability on Windows, as now users who run PostgreSQL on Windows now have the option to connect over UNIX domain sockets.
2. Addition of glossary of terms in documentation to help people familiarize themselves with both PostgreSQL and general database concepts.
3. pgbenchutility supports the ability to partition its “accounts” table, making it easier to benchmark workloads that contain partitions.
4. Inclusion of \warncommand in psql which is similar to the \echo command in terms of output data, except \warn sends it to stderr.