09.266.2016 - Announcement: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Enhancements: Support for new minor versions, Logical Replication, and Amazon RDS PostgreSQL as a source for AWS DMS

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.