Time to test: PostgreSQL 17beta1 is there

It is this time of the year when a new PostgreSQL major version beta release is available for testing. PostgreSQL 17 (scheduled to be released later this year) is no exception to that: Last week, the first beta of PostgreSQL 17 was announced. While many people are not really interested in beta releases, they really should be, especially when it comes to critical applications. If they / you test now, potential bugs can be fixed before the final version will be released.

I am absolutely aware that testing takes time, but this time is spend wisely and you can really help the PostgreSQL community be reporting back any issues you’ll face. The earlier you can do this, the better.

The release announcement contains a summary of the major new features you might be interested in. But there is much more to explore in the release notes (just keep in mind that the release notes are also subject to change until the final release of PostgreSQL 17).

I’ve written about some of the new features here on this blog and if you want to follow up here is the list of blog posts:

• PostgreSQL 17: transaction_timeout
• PostgreSQL 17: Track skipped rows from COPY in pg_stat_progress_copy
• PostgreSQL 17: Incremental backups, pg_walsummary
• PostgreSQL 17: copy and SAVE_ERROR_TO
• PostgreSQL 17: Incremental backups, system information functions
• PostgreSQL 17: Incremental backups and backup chains
• PostgreSQL 17: Support for incremental backups
• PostgreSQL 17: Reset shared statistics at once with pg_stat_reset_shared()
• PostgreSQL 17: New catalog view pg_stat_checkpointer
• PostgreSQL 17: login event triggers
• PostgreSQL 17: Support for AT LOCAL
• No more snapshot too old in PostgreSQL 17
• PostgreSQL 17: Allow “\watch” to stop based on the number of rows returned
• PostgreSQL 17: pg_wait_events
• PostgreSQL 17: Split and Merge partitions
• PostgreSQL 17: Convert a physical replica to a logical replica using pg_createsubscriber
• PostgreSQL 17: Add allow_alter_system GUC

Happy testing.