PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 Released!

Posted on 2024-06-27 by PostgreSQL Global Development Group
PostgreSQL Project

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces that the second beta release of PostgreSQL 17 is now available for download. This release contains previews of all features that will be available when PostgreSQL 17 is made generally available, though some details of the release can change during the beta period.

You can find information about all of the PostgreSQL 17 features and changes in the release notes:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/release-17.html

In the spirit of the open source PostgreSQL community, we strongly encourage you to test the new features of PostgreSQL 17 on your systems to help us eliminate bugs or other issues that may exist. While we do not advise you to run PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 in production environments, we encourage you to find ways to run your typical application workloads against this beta release.

Your testing and feedback will help the community ensure that the PostgreSQL 17 release upholds our standards of delivering a stable, reliable release of the world's most advanced open source relational database. Please read more about our beta testing process and how you can contribute:

https://www.postgresql.org/developer/beta/

Upgrading to PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2

To upgrade to PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 from an earlier version of PostgreSQL, you will need to use a strategy similar to upgrading between major versions of PostgreSQL (e.g. pg_upgrade or pg_dump / pg_restore). For more information, please visit the documentation section on upgrading.

Changes Since Beta 1

Fixes and changes in PostgreSQL 17 Beta 2 include:

  • Correctly enforce the default behavior of the ON EMPTY clause when it's not present in a SQL/JSON query.
  • Fixed issue with pg_logical_slot_get_changes related to resource ownership.
  • Several fixes around the new data structure for vacuum-related data.

Please see the release notes for a complete list of new and changed features:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/release-17.html

Testing for Bugs & Compatibility

The stability of each PostgreSQL release greatly depends on you, the community, to test the upcoming version with your workloads and testing tools in order to find bugs and regressions before the general availability of PostgreSQL 17. As this is a Beta, minor changes to database behaviors, feature details, and APIs are still possible. Your feedback and testing will help determine the final tweaks on the new features, so please test in the near future. The quality of user testing helps determine when we can make a final release.

A list of open issues is publicly available in the PostgreSQL wiki. You can report bugs using this form on the PostgreSQL website:

https://www.postgresql.org/account/submitbug/

Beta Schedule

This is the second beta release of version 17. The PostgreSQL Project will release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more release candidates, until the final release around September/October 2024. For further information please see the Beta Testing page.

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