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+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.
+
+"The development community behind PostgreSQL contributed features for PostgreSQL
+12 that offer performance and space management gains that our users can achieve
+with minimal effort, as well as improvements in enterprise authentication,
+administration functionality, and SQL/JSON support." said Dave Page, a core team
+member of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group. "This release continues the
+trend of making it easier to manage database workloads large and small while
+building on PostgreSQL's reputation of flexibility, reliability and stability in
+production environments."
+
+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 limited subset. PostgreSQL 12 also improves the performance of
+adding data to partitioned tables with "INSERT" and "COPY", and includes the
+ability to attach a new partition to a table without blocking queries.
+
+There are additional enhancements to indexing in PostgreSQL 12 that affect
+overall performance, including lower overhead in write-ahead log generation for
+the GiST, GIN, and SP-GiST index types, the ability to create covering indexes
+(the "INCLUDE" clause) on GiST indexes, the ability to perform K-nearest
+neighbor queries with the distance operator ("<->") using SP-GiST indexes, and
+CREATE STATISTICS now supporting most-common value (MCV) statistics to help
+generate better query plans when using columns that are nonuniformly
+distributed.
+
+Just-in-time (JIT) compilation using LLVM, introduced in PostgreSQL 11, is now
+enabled by default. JIT compilation can provide performance benefits to the
+execution of expressions in WHERE clauses, target lists, aggregates, and some
+internal operations, and is available if your PostgreSQL installation is
+compiled or packaged with LLVM.
+
+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 to continue its implementation of the SQL standard with enhanced
+functionality.
+
+PostgreSQL 12 introduces the ability to run queries over JSON documents using
+JSON path expressions defined in the SQL/JSON standard. Such queries may utilize
+the existing indexing mechanisms for documents stored in the JSONB format to
+efficiently retrieve data.
+
+Common table expressions, also known as "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 introduces "generated columns." Defined in the SQL standard, this
+type of column computes its value from the contents of other columns in the same
+table. In this version, PostgreSQL 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. 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 if
+PostgreSQL is compiled with OpenLDAP.
+
+Additionally, PostgreSQL 12 now supports a form of multifactor authentication. A
+PostgreSQL server can now require an authenticating 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/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.
+
+Press Release Translations
+--------------------------
+
+* Chinese: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/zh/#original_release
+* French: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/fr/#original_release
+* German: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/de/#original_release
+* Hebrew: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/he/#original_release
+* Japanese: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/ja/#original_release
+* Portuguese: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/pt/#original_release
+* Russian: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/ru/#original_release
+* Spanish: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/presskit12/es/#original_release
+
+Links
+-----
+
+* Download: https://www.postgresql.org/download/
+* Release Notes: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/release-12.html
+* Press Kit: https://www.postgresql.org/about/press/
+* Security Page: https://www.postgresql.org/support/security/
+* Versioning Policy: https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/
+* Follow @postgresql on Twitter: https://twitter.com/postgresql
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