What’s New in EDB Postgres 16: Portfolio Release

Today, EDB announces portfolio support of Postgres databases distributions, extensions and tools for v16. EDB Postgres database distributions include EDB Postgres Extended (PGE) Server and EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) 16. This release merges all of the changes from PostgreSQL 16. Key changes and enhancements in PostgreSQL 16 include significant improvements to parallel processing, resulting in faster queries, advances to logical replication enabling complex architectures, and improved privilege administration changes. These enhancements reinforce PostgreSQL's position as the most advanced open-source database.

All supported software with Break/Fix entitlement as part of the EDB Postgres platform is now certified with v16 on all supported platforms (OS/architectures), including EDB Postgres Distributed. Along with software packages for EDB customers to install and use, EDB Postgres distributions are available in EDB BigAnimal and with EDB Postgres for Kubernetes.

EDB Enhances Postgres 16 For Your Enterprise Needs

The adoption of Postgres in mission-critical and highly regulated environments continues to grow along with companies migrating their legacy database systems to Postgres. EDB aims to address these demands by adding flexible cryptographic key support for both PGE and EPAS, and this release adds additional advanced security features and even more Oracle Compatibility features to EPAS, requiring fewer rewrites when migrating from legacy databases and enabling developers to use familiar tools when writing business logic on a Postgres based database.

Along with the upstream PostgreSQL features, the following enhancements are included in both PGE and EPAS: 

• Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) now supports choosing between both AES-128 and AES-256 encryption. Customers can choose AES-128 when performance and power consumption need to be considered and AES-256 is available to meet regulatory requirements or when looking for maximum security. 

The following enhancements are in EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) 16 only:

• Security Features 
  • Privilege Analysis: Better security through a principle of least privilege model by running a trace and reporting all privileges being used and all granted privileges not being used for a role. This enables customers to lock down their database by safely removing excessive privileges from database users to avoid intentional and/or unintentional data access and modification. Now you can easily provide auditors with a list of database privileges for database roles.

• Oracle Compatibility
  • EDB Stored Procedure Language (SPL) Check: Find errors in EDB Stored Procedures not found until runtime despite a successful CREATE PROCEDURE/FUNCTION command with EDB SPL.
  • Additional Subprograms: Expanded support of the following subprograms by including those found most frequently in the EDB Migration Portal: DBMS_SESSION, DBMS_SQL, UTL_FILE. 
  • Package Synonyms: Expand the list of Synonym support in EPAS to include Packages. 
  • Updates to MERGE SQL: Additional Oracle-compatible behavior was added to SQL MERGE to reduce the number of run time differences between Oracle MERGE and Postgres MERGE. 
  • New NLS Charset functions: NLS_CHARSET_ID, NLS_CHARSET_NAME, NLS_CHARSET_DECL_LEN
  • New Oracle Compatibility Package to run Privilege captures and report on used and unused privileges: DBMS_PRIVILEGE_CAPTURE

• Improvements
  • DBMS_JOB and DBMS_SCHEDULER have been updated, making complex job scheduling from within EPAS easier than ever and available with EDB Postgres for Kubernetes and BigAnimal, beginning with v16. 

Whether you are interested in the latest PostgreSQL advancements, want to migrate off of Oracle, or need a Postgres-based database to meet the most stringent security requirements, EDB Postgres was built for you!

Learn more how to get started on EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) here, or contact one of our Postgres experts for a deeper dive.