April 8, 2016 – Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL now supports major version 9.5, which contains several new features including UPSERT capability, Row Level Security (RLS) and several Big Data capabilities. In addition to supporting the new major version of PostgreSQL, 9.5, RDS for PostgreSQL also supports new minor versions 9.4.7 and 9.3.12, which contain several enhancements and fixes. All three versions are available to use starting today.
PostgreSQL 9.5 (supported via minor version 9.5.2) offers the following new features:
UPSERT: Shorthand for "INSERT, ON CONFLICT UPDATE", this feature allows new and updated rows to be treated the same way, enabling the database to handle conflicts between concurrent data changes and simplifying application development. Row Level Security (RLS): RLS implements true per-row and per-column data access control which integrates with external label-based security stacks, giving you more control over securing your data. Big Data features: PostgreSQL 9.5 includes multiple new features for integrating with Big Data systems, including BRIN Indexing to create tiny but effective indexes for "naturally ordered" tables; faster sorts using "abbreviated keys" algorithm to sort through text and NUMERIC fields faster; CUBE, ROLLUP and GROUPING SETS to produce reports with multiple levels of summarization to allow integration with OLAP tools such as Tableau; Foreign Data Wrappers (FDWs) with IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA and JOIN pushdown to make query connections to external databases easier and more efficient; and TABLESPACE to generate a statistical sample of huge tables to avoid expensive sorting. You can create a new PostgreSQL 9.5.2 database instance with a few clicks on the AWS Management Console (learn how). You may also upgrade an existing PostgreSQL 9.4 instance to version 9.5.2 using major version upgrade. If you wish to upgrade from version 9.3 to 9.5, you will have to perform point-and-click upgrade twice. Each upgrade operation involves a short period of unavailability for your database instance. Learn more about upgrading your database instances.
In addition to PostgreSQL 9.5.2, we also now support PostgreSQL 9.4.7 and 9.3.12, which include several fixes and enhancements as listed here. To learn more about these new versions, please refer to their release notes:
Release Notes for 9.5.2
Release Notes for 9.4.7
Release Notes for 9.3.12
All three versions also now provide visibility into the status of autovacuum by allowing rds_superuser access to autovacuum sessions in pg_stat_activity. Read more about the new features in PostgreSQL 9.5 on the PostgreSQL website. For more details on using Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, please refer to the Amazon RDS User's Guide.
Amazon RDS
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database administration tasks, freeing you up to focus on your applications and business.
Contact:
Kevin Jernigan
Product Manager, RDS for PostgreSQL
+1-415-710-8828
kmj (at) amazon (dot) com