Today here are highlights about new features regarding replication slots that have been lately committed and will be present as part of PostgreSQL 9.6:

Since PostgreSQL 9.3, the code tree is shipping a file named xlogreader.c that contains a set of independent routines that can be used to read and decode WAL records. While it is not available in an independent library, any frontend or backend application can use it at compilation to be able to work on WAL. The code of PostgreSQL uses it already in a couple of places, hence many examples are already available in core to help the development of plugins with this facility:

As the first post dedicated to the feature coverage of Postgres 9.6 which is currently in active development, let’s talk about the following commit:

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PostgreSQL 9.5 is coming up with a new feature aimed at simplifying tracking of GUC parameters when those are set in a multiple set of files by introducing a new system view called pg_file_settings:

Finding its origin as a fix for [pg_rewind] (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/app-pgrewind.html) where rewind process could fail if a file marked as listed in the source server was removed before fetching its data (see more details here, this could impact temporary files or relation file for example), here is a small feature of PostgreSQL 9.5 that may be useful for application developers:

jsonb is coming up with a set of new features in Postgres 9.5. Most of them have been introduced by the following commit:

After seeing an email on [pgsql-general] (https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CANkGpBs7qgAkgQ-OPZY0EsaM6+WUE5MgpyeHCGo_eOQ7tJVyyg@mail.gmail.com) about a user willing to be able to archive WAL from a standby to store them locally and to save bandwidth by only receiving the WAL segments through a WAL stream, let’s talk about a new feature of Postgres 9.5 that will introduce exactly what this user was looking for, as known as being able to archive WAL from a standby to have more complicated archiving strategies. This feature has been introduced by this commit:

Today’s highlight is about a new system view that will land in Postgres 9.5, that has been introduced by this commit:

Postgres 9.5 is bringing a change in the way WAL is archived with the following commit: