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+# PostgreSQL 12 Released!
+
+The PostgreSQL Global Development Group today announced the release of
+PostgreSQL 12, the latest version of the world’s most advanced open source
+database.
+
+PostgreSQL 12 enhancements include notable improvements
+to query performance, particularly over larger data sets, and overall space
+utilization. This release provides application developers with new capabilities
+such as SQL/JSON path expression support, optimizations for how common-table
+expression ("WITH") queries are executed, and generated columns. The PostgreSQL
+community continues to support the extensibility and robustness of PostgreSQL,
+with further additions to internationalization, authentication, and providing
+easier ways to administrate PostgreSQL. This release also introduces the
+pluggable table storage interface, which allows developers to create their own
+methods for storing data.
+
+**HOLD FOR QUOTE**
+
+PostgreSQL benefits from over 20 years of open source development and has become
+the preferred open source relational database for organizations of all sizes.
+The project continues to receive recognition across the industry, including
+being featured for the second year in a row as the "DBMS of the Year" in 2018 by
+DB-Engines and receiving the "Lifetime Achievement" open source award at OSCon
+2019.
+
+## Overall Performance Improvements
+
+PostgreSQL 12 provides significant performance and maintenance enhancements to
+its indexing system and to partitioning.
+
+B-tree Indexes, the standard type of indexing in PostgreSQL, have been optimized
+in PostgreSQL 12 to better handle workloads where the indexes are frequently
+modified. Using a fair use implementation of the TPC-C benchmark, PostgreSQL 12
+demonstrated on average a 40% reduction in space utilization and an overall gain
+in query performance.
+
+Queries on partitioned tables have also seen demonstrable improvements,
+particularly for tables with thousands of partitions that only need to retrieve
+data from a select few. PostgreSQL 12 also improvements the performance of
+adding data to partitioned tables via "INSERT" and "COPY", and a new partition
+can be attached to a table with blocking any queries on it.
+
+There are additional enhancements to indexing in PostgreSQL 12 that affect
+overall performance, including lower overhead in write-head-log generation for
+GiST, GIN, and SP-GiST indexes, the ability to create covering indexes (the
+"INCLUDE" clause) on GiST indexes, and the ability to perform K-nearest
+neighbor queries with the distance operator ("<->") using SP-GiST indexes.
+
+## Enhancements to SQL Conformance & Functionality
+
+PostgreSQL is known for its conformance to the SQL standard – one reason why it
+was renamed from "POSTGRES" to "PostgreSQL" – and PostgreSQL 12 adds several
+features that build on the implementation of the SQL standard and offer enhanced
+functionality.
+
+PostgreSQL 12 introduces the ability to run queries over JSON documents using
+JSON path expressions defined in the SQL/JSON standard. Additionally, certain
+JSON path expressions can utilize the existing indexing mechanisms for documents
+stored in the JSONB format to efficiently retrieve data.
+
+Common table expressions, aka "WITH" queries, can now be automatically inlined
+by PostgreSQL 12, which in turn can help increase the performance of many
+existing queries. In this release, a WITH query can be inlined if it is not
+recursive, does not have any side-effects, and is only referenced once in a
+later part of a query.
+
+PostgreSQL 12 also introduces generated columns, which is a type of column that
+can be computed its value from other columns in the same table. Currently,
+PostgreSQL only supports "stored generated columns," where the computed value is
+stored on the disk.
+
+## Internationalization
+
+PostgreSQL 12 extends its support of ICU collations by allowing users to define
+"nondeterministic collations" that can, for example, allow case-insensitive or
+accent-insensitive comparisons.
+
+## Authentication
+
+PostgreSQL expands on its robust authentication method support with several
+enhancements that provide additional security and functionality in
+PostgreSQL 12. This release introduces both client and server-side encryption
+for authentication over GSSAPI interfaces, as well as the ability for PostgreSQL
+to discover LDAP servers using if it was compiled with OpenLDAP.
+
+Additionally, PostgreSQL 12 now supports a form of multifactor authentication. A
+PostgreSQL server can now require an authentication client to provide a valid
+SSL certificate with their username using the "clientcert=verify-full" option
+and combine this with the requirement of a separate authentication method (e.g.
+"scram-sha-256").
+
+## Administration
+
+PostgreSQL 12 introduces the ability to rebuild indexes without blocking writes
+to an index via the "REINDEX CONCURRENTLY" command, allowing users to avoid
+downtime scenarios for lengthy index rebuilds.
+
+Additionally, PostgreSQL 12 can now enable or disable page checksums in an
+offline cluster using the "pg_checksums" command. Previously page checksums, a
+feature to help verify the integrity of data stored to disk, could only be
+enabled at the time a PostgreSQL cluster was initialized with "initdb."
+
+For a full list of features included in this release, please read the release
+notes, which can be found at: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/static/release-12.html
+
+## About PostgreSQL
+
+PostgreSQL is the world's most advanced open source database, with a global
+community of thousands of users, contributors, companies and organizations. The
+PostgreSQL Project builds on over 30 years of engineering, starting at the
+University of California, Berkeley, and has continued with an unmatched pace of
+development. PostgreSQL's mature feature set not only matches top proprietary
+database systems, but exceeds them in advanced database features, extensibility,
+security, and stability.
+
+Learn more about PostgreSQL and participate in our community at PostgreSQL.org.
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