Barman (Backup and Recovery Manager) is an open-source administration tool for disaster recovery of PostgreSQL servers written in Python. Barman enables the remote online hot backup of multiple servers in business critical environments, helping make a DBA's life easier during the recovery stage - now with zero data loss.

What's New

The major release of version 2.0 is an important milestone in Barman's journey as it introduces support for a “streaming only” backup of a PostgreSQL server, removing the need for SSH connections altogether.

This is made possible by two significant improvements related to streaming replication:

• Transparent integration with pg_basebackup for backup operations
• Full support of replication slots for WAL streaming

Through streaming-only backups, Barman is now able to reach Docker and Windows users of PostgreSQL. From an architectural point of view, Barman is now able to offer even more versatility and flexibility by combining traditional SSH communications with PostgreSQL’s native streaming connections.

Another important addition is support for synchronous WAL streaming that allows zero data loss backups and reduces implementation costs of PostgreSQL clusters with “RPO=0” business continuity requirements.

Barman 2.0 also supports the new concurrent backup API introduced in PostgreSQL 9.6, eliminating the need for the pgespresso extension when taking backups from a standby server.

The new 'barman-cli' package improves integration of Barman with repmgr for better high availability outcomes.

Disaster Recovery

Recovery planning is frequently overlooked during business continuity planning, but failure is always an option. Unfortunately, our experience has shown us that typically, disaster recovery plans are only implemented after suffering severe data loss or down-time. Business critical environments must be prepared for the unexpected and Barman is the right tool organisations can use to be prepared.

Now, through synchronous WAL streaming, Barman allows a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 0. Barman now also supports PostgreSQL on Windows (experimental) and Docker. Improved support of very large databases and clusters is currently being developed for a future Barman release.

Professional Support for Barman

In addition to the disaster recovery and business continuity support already available through 2ndQuadrant, as the developers of Barman, the team at 2ndQuadrant provides superior support for Barman users. The turnkey disaster recovery solution service includes architecture analysis, installation, training and a final simulation with internal personnel. 2ndQuadrant offers custom solutions, development of new features, training, and 24/7 production support.

Upgrading from Barman 1.X

The 2.0 release requires that users explicitly configure their archiving strategy. Before, the file based archiver controlled by the ‘archiver’ option was enabled by default. When you upgrade your Barman installation to 2.0, make sure you add the appropriate line globally or for any server that requires it. Barman using officially distributed RPM and Debian packages will be automatically updated.

For installation or upgrade instructions, please see the "Links" section below.

For the comprehensive release notes, please read "Barman 2.0 Release Notes".

If you have any questions about Barman and disaster recovery scenarios using Barman, you can reach the dev team using the community mailing list.

To submit private inquiries regarding implementation, customised features or sponsorship opportunities email the team directly at info@pgbarman.org.

Links

• Website
• Download
• Online Documentation
• Man page, section 1
• Man page, section 5
• Support
• Client utilities for Barman
• pgespresso extension

I am happy to announce the new major release of dbMigration .NET 3.7. It is a simple, easy and intuitive multiple database migration and sync tool, with it you can easily migrate schema and data between different databases without complicated procedures.

Supported databases: PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQL Azure, LocalDB, MySQL, Oracle, IBM DB2, Informix, Vertica, NuoDB, Teradata, Sybase ASE, Firebird, SQLite, SQLCe, Access, dBase, FoxPro, Text, Excel, ODBC, OleDB...etc.

Free, All-In-One, Portable, and Single executable file.

Major New features from version 3.2 to 3.7:

• PostgreSQL 9.6+ compatibility
• Added Migrating VIEWS/FUNCTIONS/SEQUENCES definitions (PG->PG)
• Added Test mode (Only Top 100 Rows)
• Massive performance improvements
• Improved Automatic Mapping Types
• Improved Data Synchronization
• Improved Command-Line
• ...and more

The new version is immediately available for download.

Starting today, you can take advantage of several new enhancements to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. These include new minor versions (9.3.14, 9.4.9 and 9.5.2), support for logical replication, event triggers, and the ability to use RDS for PostgreSQL as a source for AWS Database Migration Service.

New Minor Versions:

Customers can now launch new and upgrade their existing Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instances to new PostgreSQL minor versions 9.3.14, 9.4.9, and 9.5.4, using either the AWS console or Amazon RDS API. These new minor version releases contain several enhancements and fixes to PostgreSQL. To learn more about these new versions, please refer to their release notes:

• Release Notes for 9.3.14

• Release Notes for 9.4.9

• Release Notes for 9.5.4

Logical Replication and support for AWS Database Migration Services

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL now supports logical replication on RDS for PostgreSQL versions 9.4.9 and 9.5.4. With logical replication, we have added support for logical decoding, and you can setup logical replication slots on your instance and stream changes from the database through these slots. A new rds_replication role, assigned to the master user by default, can be used to grant permissions to manipulate and stream data through logical slots. To enable logical replication, set the parameter rds.logical_replication to 1. These logical slots also enable the RDS for PostgreSQL to be used as a source for AWS Database Migration Service (DMS). You can learn more about using RDS for PostgreSQL as a source for DMS in the AWS Database Blog and RDS documentation.

Event Triggers:

Amazon RDS now supports the event triggers in PostgreSQL versions 9.4.9 and later and version 9.5.4 and later. The master user account can be used to create, modify, rename, and delete event triggers. Event triggers are at the DB instance level, so they apply to all databases on an instance. For more information about event triggers for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, refer to the RDS documentation.

New Parameter for RAM Disk Size:

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL now supports a new parameter, rds.pg_stat_ramdisk_size, which can be used to define the system memory allocated to a RAM disk for storing PostgreSQL stats_temp_directory. Under certain workloads, it can result in improved performance and decreased I/O requirements. You can read about the details of the new parameter here in the RDS documentation.

All the enhancements mentioned above are available in all regions. You can learn more about Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL on the RDS product page and the RDS documentation.

SQL Maestro Group announces the release of PostgreSQL PHP Generator 16.9, a powerful GUI frontend for Windows that allows you to generate feature-rich CRUD web applications for your PostgreSQL database.

The new version is immediately available at
http://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/postgresql/phpgenerator/.

Most of software features can be seen in action in our Feature Demo and NBA Demo applications.

Top 20 new features:

1. Column Filtering.
2. Custom Form Layouts.
3. Enhanced Master/Detail Views.
4. Record comparison.
5. Multi-Row Column Headers.
6. Breadcrumb navigation.
7. Automatic generation of index pages.
8. On-the-Fly Adding New Items to Lookup Controls.
9. Improved Filter Builder.
10. Quick Edit.
11. Adding multiple records from a single Insert form.
12. Geo Charts.
13. Permissions and RLS for all-level Details.
14. Flexible card views.
15. Enhanced JavaScript API.
16. OnGetCustomExportOptions event.
17. OnGetCustomUploadFileName event.
18. Built-in Lightbox component for external images.
19. Simple Data Grid Styling.
20. A number of GUI improvements.

There are also some other useful things. Full press release is available at the SQL Maestro Group website.

Fixes regression from 1210

• json should be returned as PGObject, not as String for backward compatibility reasons

For more information about the release, please visit https://jdbc.postgresql.org/documentation/changelog.html#version_9.4.1211

I am happy to announce the release of PGLiveBackup (Beta 1). PGLiveBackup is a complete backup and restore automation solution written 100% using BASH only - which makes it fully "plug and play" deployable accross linux/unix distros. Plus, the metadata repository is managed as a schema in the local postgres database.

Please read the documentation for more information.

http://www.pglivebackup.org

Helsinki, Finland — September 15, 2016 — Aiven brings easy, powerful hosted PostgreSQL to Microsoft Azure

Aiven adds service availability for nineteen new cloud regions from the Microsoft Azure cloud, making Aiven the cloud database provider with the widest geographic availability in the world. Microsoft Azure is a leading global cloud provider and what makes them special is their high number of data centers around the world, currently totaling 30+ regions.

Aiven PostgreSQL is an easy-to-use Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) offering providing Highly Available service plans with advanced features. Aiven PostgreSQL backups are automatic and zero-downtime database plan upgrades allow easy upgrades from single-node starter plans to a geo-replicated premium setups. Database services can even be migrated between different cloud providers with no downtime. Aiven PostgreSQL plans include all of the most popular PostgreSQL extensions such as PLv8 and PostGIS. All Aiven services keep your data safe and encrypted at all times, both in transit and at rest.

The first batch of new Azure cloud regions that are immediately available are all from North America and Europe. Asian and South American regions will be made available in the upcoming weeks.

The new Aiven Azure regions that are immediately available:

• United States: Iowa (Central US), Virginia (East US), Virginia (East US 2), Illinois (North Central US), Texas (South Central US), California (West US), Washington (West US 2), Wyoming (West Central US)
• Europe: Ireland (North Europe), Netherlands (West Europe), England (UK South), Wales (UK West)
• Canada: Ontario (Canada Central), Quebec (Canada East)

The following regions will become available in the upcoming weeks:

• South America: Brazil (Brazil South)
• Asia: Hong Kong (East Asia), Singapore (Southeast Asia), Japan (Japan East), Japan (Japan West)

New services can be launched in the new Azure regions today and using Aiven's zero-downtime migration, it is also possible to easily migrate your existing services to Microsoft Azure.

About Aiven

Aiven is a Finnish, Helsinki-based cloud technology startup company focusing on delivering easy to use, yet technically advanced cloud database services to companies around the world. Aiven offers hosted PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Apache Kafka, Redis and InfluxDB services on five different cloud providers: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, UpCloud and Microsoft Azure.

https://aiven.io/

https://aiven.io/postgresql

The JDBC group is proud to announce the latest driver with the following notable changes:

Better support for RETURNGENERATEDKEYS, statements with RETURNING clause Avoid user-visible prepared-statement errors if client uses DEALLOCATE/DISCARD statements (invalidate cache when those statements detected) Avoid user-visible prepared-statement errors if client changes searchpath (invalidate cache when set searchpath detected) Support comments when replacing {fn ...} JDBC syntax Support for Types.REF_CURSOR

See Change Log for more details.

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the first release candidate of version 9.6 is available for download. As a release candidate, 9.6 RC 1 should be identical to the final release of the new version. It contains fixes for all known issues found during testing, so users should test and report any issues that they find.

Changes Since Beta 4

PostgreSQL 9.6 RC 1 contains fixes for all of the issues discovered by users when testing Beta 4, including the following open items:

• Add SQL functions for inspecting index access methods
• Fix assorted bugs in bloom indexes
• Add regression test for TOAST insertion bug
• Fix parallel query error handling in non-English locales
• Many documentation updates

As of RC 1, parallel query is disabled by default in postgresql.conf. Users wishing to parallelize queries will need to raise max_parallel_workers_per_gather.

Release Schedule

This is the first release candidate for version 9.6. The PostgreSQL Project will create additional release candidates until all reported issues are resolved, then release 9.6.0 final. For further information please see the Beta Testing page.

Links

• Downloads Page
• Beta Testing Information
• 9.6 Beta Release Notes
• What's New in 9.6
• 9.6 Open Items

Greetings!

Keynote Speaker

PostgresOpen 2016 welcomes Marianne Bellotti, Digital Service Expert at the United States Digital Service (@USDS) as our keynote speaker! @USDS is a startup at the White House that pairs the country’s top technology talent with the best public servants, to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country’s most important digital services.

Our full schedule is available here:

https://postgresopen.org/events/schedule/pgopen2016/

Registration

We're down to the last couple of weeks before the conference, don't miss out! Go here to register for the conference, tutorials, and the first, ever, PostgresOpen Charity Golf Tournament:

https://2016.postgresopen.org/tickets/

We still have room in our great tutorials, but space is limited!

Hotel

Today is your last chance to book your hotel room at our conference rate at the Westin Galleria Dallas. Book your reservation now here:

https://2016.postgresopen.org/venue/

Sponsorship

PostgresOpen could not be put on without the support of our excellent sponsors!

https://2016.postgresopen.org/sponsors/

PostgresOpen 2016 is proud to announce 2ndQuadrant (Diamond), EnterpriseDB (Platinum), Crunchy Data (Gold), Amazon Web Services (Gold), Javelin (Silver) and OmniTI (Silver) as top-tier sponsors!

We look forward to seeing you in Dallas!

Stephen Frost

PostgresOpen 2016 Committee Chair

https://2016.postgresopen.org/

https://twitter.com/postgresopen

Oxford, United Kingdom - August 11, 2016

Bi-Directional Replication for PostgreSQL (Postgres-BDR, or BDR) is the first open source multi-master replication system for PostgreSQL to reach full production status, developed by 2ndQuadrant and assisted by a keen user community. BDR is specifically designed for use in geographically distributed clusters, using highly efficient asynchronous logical replication, supporting anything from 2-48 nodes in a distributed database.

WHAT'S NEW?

Significant improvements related to stability and bug fixes have been made in this release. The most important factors of this release are:

• Smoother handling of schema changes (DDL) statements allowing increased operational stability and reduced maintenance.
• Various bug fixes for operational issues demonstrating high level of maturity
• Performance tuning, especially of global sequence handling
• Removal of the now deprecated UDR
• Extensive documentation improvements based upon user feedback

For a more comprehensive list of release notes, please click here: http://bdr-project.org/docs/stable/release-1.0.0.html

SUPPORT & RELEASE SCHEDULE

Postgres-BDR 9.4 1.0 will be supported until December 2019, when PostgreSQL 9.4 goes EOL. BDR continues to be developed and BDR9.6 will be released within 6 months. The BDR project has already delivered the majority of its code into PostgreSQL core, though it will likely be about 2-3 more years before this functionality is available in PostgreSQL core.

IS Postgres-BDR RIGHT FOR YOU?

BDR is well suited for databases where:

• Data is distributed globally
• Majority of data is written to from only one node at a time (For example, the US node mostly writes changes to US customers, each branch office writes mostly to branch-office-specific data, and so on.)
• There is a need for SELECTs over complete data set (lookups and consolidation)
• There are OLTP workloads with many smaller transactions
• Transactions mostly touching non overlapping sets of data
• There is partition and latency tolerance

However, this is not a comprehensive list and use cases for BDR can vary based on database type and functionality.

In addition, BDR aids business continuity by providing increased availability during network faults. Applications can be closer to the data and more responsive for users, allowing for a much more satisfying end-user experience.

PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT FOR BDR

BDR is developed and supported by 2ndQuadrant. 2ndQuadrant provides professional support for BDR, as well as consultation and training. With our deep knowledge of distributed databases, we will ensure that you are able to evaluate your use case and applications and determine the most suitable product or solution.

BDR is also available in 2ndQuadrant Cloud, initially on AWS.

For more information, please visit the homepage: https://2ndquadrant.com/en/resources/bdr/.

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released an update to all supported versions of our database system, including 9.5.4, 9.4.9, 9.3.14, 9.2.18 and 9.1.23. This release fixes two security issues. It also patches a number of other bugs reported over the last three months. Users who rely on security isolation between database users should update as soon as possible. Other users should plan to update at the next convenient downtime.

Security Issues

Two security holes have been closed by this release:

• CVE-2016-5423: certain nested CASE expressions can cause the server to crash.
• CVE-2016-5424: database and role names with embedded special characters can allow code injection during administrative operations like pg_dumpall.

The fix for the second issue also adds an option, -reuse-previous, to psql's \connect command. pg_dumpall will also refuse to handle database and role names containing line breaks after the update. For more information on these issues and how they affect backwards-compatibility, see the Release Notes.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

This update also fixes a number of bugs reported in the last few months. Some of these issues affect only version 9.5, but many affect all supported versions:

• Fix misbehaviors of IS NULL/IS NOT NULL with composite values
• Fix three areas where INSERT ... ON CONFLICT failed to work properly with other SQL features.
• Make INET and CIDR data types properly reject bad IPv6 values
• Prevent crash in "point ## lseg" operator for NaN input
• Avoid possible crash in pg_get_expr()
• Fix several one-byte buffer over-reads in to_number()
• Don't needlessly plan query if WITH NO DATA is specified
• Avoid crash-unsafe state in expensive heap_update() paths
• Fix hint bit update during WAL replay of row locking operations
• Avoid unnecessary "could not serialize access" with FOR KEY SHARE
• Avoid crash in postgres -C when the specified variable is a null string
• Fix two issues with logical decoding and subtransactions
• Ensure that backends see up-to-date statistics for shared catalogs
• Prevent possible failure when vacuuming multixact IDs in an upgraded database
• When a manual ANALYZE specifies columns, don't reset changes_since_analyze
• Fix ANALYZE's overestimation of n_distinct for columns with nulls
• Fix bug in b-tree mark/restore processing
• Fix building of large (bigger than shared_buffers) hash indexes
• Prevent infinite loop in GiST index build with NaN values
• Fix possible crash during a nearest-neighbor indexscan
• Fix "PANIC: failed to add BRIN tuple" error
• Prevent possible crash during background worker shutdown
• Many fixes for issues in parallel pg_dump and pg_restore
• Make pg_basebackup accept -Z 0 as no compression
• Make regression tests safe for Danish and Welsh locales

The libpq client library has also been updated to support future two-part PostgreSQL version numbers. This update also contains tzdata release 2016f, with updates for Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Morocco.

EOL Warning for Version 9.1

PostgreSQL version 9.1 will be End-of-Life in September 2016. The project expects to only release one more update for that version. We urge users to start planning an upgrade to a later version of PostgreSQL as soon as possible. See our Versioning Policy for more information.

Updating

All PostgreSQL update releases are cumulative. As with other minor releases, users are not required to dump and reload their database or use pg_upgrade in order to apply this update release; you may simply shut down PostgreSQL and update its binaries. Users who have skipped one or more update releases may need to run additional, post-update steps; please see the release notes for earlier versions for details.

Links: Download Release Notes Security Page Versioning Policy

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the fourth beta release of PostgreSQL 9.6 is available for download. This release contains previews of all of the features which will be available in the final release of version 9.6, including fixes to many of the issues found in the first and second betas. Users are encouraged to continue testing their applications against 9.6 beta 4.

Changes Since Beta 3

9.6 Beta 4 includes the security fixes in the 2016-08-11 Security Update, as well as the general bug fixes offered for stable versions. Additionally, it contains fixes for the following beta issues reported since the last beta:

• Change minimum max_worker_processes from 1 to 0
• Make array_to_tsvector() sort and de-duplicate the given strings
• Fix ts_delete(tsvector, text[]) to cope with duplicate array entries
• Fix hard to hit race condition in heapam's tuple locking code
• Prevent "snapshot too old" from trying to return pruned TOAST tuples
• Make INSERT-from-multiple-VALUES-rows handle targetlist indirection
• Do not let PostmasterContext survive into background workers
• Add missing casts in information schema
• Fix assorted problems in recovery tests
• Block interrupts during HandleParallelMessages()
• Remove unused arguments from pg_replication_origin_xact_reset function
• Correctly handle owned sequences with extensions
• Many fixes for tsqueue.c
• Eliminate a few more user-visible "cache lookup failed" errors
• Teach parser to transform "x IS [NOT] DISTINCT FROM NULL" to a NullTest
• Allow functions that return sets of tuples to return simple NULLs
• Repair damage done by citext--1.1--1.2.sql
• Correctly set up aggregate FILTER expression in partial-aggregation plans

This beta also includes many documentation updates and improvements.

Due to changes in system catalogs, a pg_upgrade or pg_dump and restore will be required for users migrating databases from earlier betas.

Note that some known issues remain unfixed. Before reporting a bug in the beta, please check the Open Items page.

Beta Schedule

This is the fourth beta release of version 9.6. The PostgreSQL Project will release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more release candidates, until the final release in late 2016. For further information please see the Beta Testing page.

Links

• Downloads Page
• Beta Testing Information
• 9.6 Beta Release Notes
• What's New in 9.6
• 9.6 Open Items