Using performance-related features
Of course, there are also a couple of performance-related features that have made it into PostgreSQL core.
Adding multiple compression algorithms
It is now possible to define the compression algorithm for various things. This is especially important for TOAST. We can control this behavior using the ALTER TABLE command:
...
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name
SET STORAGE { PLAIN | EXTERNAL | EXTENDED | MAIN }
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name SET COMPRESSION compression_method
...
Depending on what type of data is compressed, different algorithms can be really helpful and speed things up considerably.
Handling parallel queries more efficiently
In every major release since PostgreSQL 9.6, new features to handle parallelism have been added. The same is true for version 15. It is now possible to handle DISTINCT in parallel, which was previously not possible (only single core).
With the introduction of...
