PostgreSQL 9.4 Beta 1 Released

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announced that the first beta release of PostgreSQL 9.4, the latest version of the world's leading open source database, is available today. This beta contains previews of all of the features which will be available in version 9.4, and is ready for testing by the worldwide PostgreSQL community. Please download, test, and report what you find.

Major Features

The new major features available for testing in this beta include:

• JSONB: 9.4 includes the new JSONB "binary JSON" type. This new storage format for document data is higher-performance, and comes with indexing, functions and operators for manipulating JSON data.
• Replication: The new Data Change Streaming API allows decoding and transformation of the replication stream. This lays the foundation for new replication tools that support high-speed and more flexible replication and scale-out solutions.
• Materialized Views with "Refresh Concurrently", which permit fast-response background summary reports for complex data.
• ALTER SYSTEM SET, which enables modifications to postgresql.conf from the SQL command line and from remote clients, easing administration tasks.

These features expand the capabilities of PostgreSQL, and introduce new syntax, APIs, and management interfaces.

Additional Features

There are many other features in the 9.4 beta, all of which need testing by you:

• Dynamic Background Workers
• Replication Slots
• Write Scalability improvements
• Aggregate performance improvements
• Reductions in WAL volume
• GIN indexes up to 50% smaller and faster
• Updatable security barrier views
• New array manipulation and table functions
• Time-delayed standbys
• MVCC system catalog updates
• Decrease lock level for some ALTER TABLE commands
• Backup throttling
• WITHIN GROUP

There have also been many internal changes in the inner workings of the Write Ahead Log (WAL), GIN indexes, replication, aggregation, and management of the system catalogs. The means we need you to help us find any new bugs that we may have introduced in these areas before the full release of 9.4.

For a full listing of the features in version 9.4 Beta, please see the release notes. Additional descriptions and notes on the new features are available on the 9.4 Features Wiki Page.

Test 9.4 Beta 1 Now

We depend on our community to help test the next version in order to guarantee that it is high-performance and bug-free. Please download PostgreSQL 9.4 Beta 1 and try it with your workloads and applications as soon as you can, and give feedback to the PostgreSQL developers. Features and APIs in Beta 1 will not change substantially before final release, so it is now safe to start building applications against the new features. More information on how to test and report issues

Get the PostgreSQL 9.4 Beta 1, including binaries and installers for Windows, Linux and Mac from our download page.

Full documentation of the new version is available online, and also installs with PostgreSQL.