14 DAY TRIAL // PostgreSQL, even if not as popular on Twitter as MongoDB and Redis, is still one of the most used database systems around, coming fifth in a ranking compiled by the DB-Engines website.
The PostgreSQL community is preparing for a new release these days with the upcoming 9.5 version on the horizon, with the first Alpha version hitting the Web only last week.
According to LWN, even if the alpha release was delayed by performance and security related bugs, and a beta version was supposed to be out by now, developers aren't worried at all at this point.
Beyond the delay, the 9.5 version is nothing to ignore, coming with lots of new features including support for UPSERT, a command present in MySQL, but not in PostgreSQL, allowing developers to insert new rows in their tables without worrying about duplication and conflicts.
PostgreSQL 9.5 will feature NoSQL-like features
Since MongoDB and Couchbase have recently released features to better integrate classic SQL tools into their engines, PostgreSQL is also hard at work at adapting its engine to allow it to be used as a document database as well.
It's not what you think. The engine has not been re-written, but PostgreSQL 9.5 will include better tools to handle JSON documents in the NoSQL way.
There is also row-level security (RLS) now implemented in PostgreSQL 9.5, a feature requested many times in the past by companies that use PostgreSQL in tightly-controlled environments.
Last but not least, there's multi-core scalability for running PostgreSQL in the cloud with better results, improvements to the replication process, BRIN support for indexing very large tables, and lower memory requirements for the entire engine.
A more in-depth technical overview of the new PostgreSQL 9.5 changes can be read on the official PostgreSQL wiki as well.