Release 2.17.0

[pallavisontakke]

This release adds support for PostgreSQL 17, significantly improves the performance of continuous aggregate refreshes,
and contains performance improvements for analytical queries and delete operations over compressed hypertables.
We recommend that you upgrade at the next available opportunity.

Highlighted features in TimescaleDB v2.17.0

• Full PostgreSQL 17 support for all existing features. TimescaleDB v2.17 is available for PostgreSQL 14, 15, 16, and 17.

• Significant performance improvements for continuous aggregate policies: continuous aggregate refresh is now using
  merge instead of deleting old materialized data and re-inserting.

  This update can decrease dramatically the amount of data that must be written on the continuous aggregate in the
  presence of a small number of changes, reduce the i/o cost of refreshing a continuous aggregate, and generate fewer
  Write-Ahead Logs (WAL).
  Overall, continuous aggregate policies will be more lightweight, use less system resources, and complete faster.

• Increased performance for real-time analytical queries over compressed hypertables:
  we are excited to introduce additional Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) vectorization optimization to our
  engine by supporting vectorized execution for queries that group by using the segment_by column(s) and
  aggregate using the basic aggregate functions (sum, count, avg, min, max).

  Stay tuned for more to come in follow-up releases! Support for grouping on additional columns, filtered aggregation,
  vectorized expressions, and time_bucket is coming soon.

• Improved performance of deletes on compressed hypertables when a large amount of data is affected.

  This improvement speeds up operations that delete whole segments by skipping the decompression step.
  It is enabled for all deletes that filter by the segment_by column(s).

PostgreSQL 14 deprecation announcement

We will continue supporting PostgreSQL 14 until April 2025. Closer to that time, we will announce the specific
version of TimescaleDB in which PostgreSQL 14 support will not be included going forward.

Features

• Allow DELETE on compressed chunks without decompression #6882: Allow delete of full segments on compressed chunks without decompression.
• Use MERGE statement on CAgg Refresh #7033: Use merge statement on continuous aggregates refresh.
• Add function to show compression information #7126: Add functions to show the compression information.
• Implement vectorized aggregation with grouping on segmentby column #7147: Vectorize partial aggregation for sum(int4) with grouping on segment by columns.
• Track additional extensions in telemetry #7204: Track additional extensions in telemetry.
• Refactor decompress_batches_scan functions #7207: Refactor the decompress_batches_scan functions for easier maintenance.
• Add function to drop the osm chunk #7209: Add a function to drop the osm chunk.
• Implement support for RETURNING clause for MERGE #7275: Add support for the returning clause for merge.
• Implement more vectorized aggregate functions #7200: Vectorize common aggregate functions like min, max, sum, avg, stddev, variance for compressed columns
  of arithmetic types, when there is grouping on segment by columns or no grouping.

Bug fixes

• Fix string literal length for compressed_data_info #7187: Fix the string literal length for the compressed_data_info function.
• Fix create default indexes on chunks #7191: Fix creating default indexes on chunks when migrating the data.
• Fix check when dropping compressed column (#7102) #7195: Fix the segment by and order by checks when dropping a column from a compressed hypertable.
• Fix extension comment for generic loader package #7201: Use the generic extension description when building apt and rpm loader packages.
• Add index to compression_chunk_size catalog table #7227: Add an index to the compression_chunk_size catalog table.
• Fix FK constraint where index and constraint column order differ #7229: Fix the foreign key constraints where the index and the constraint column order are different.
• Don't propagate fk constraints to osm chunk #7230: Do not propagate the foreign key constraints to the osm chunk.
• Release cache after accessing the cache entry #7234: Release the cache after accessing the cache entry.
• Force english in pg_config command #7258: Force English in the pg_config command executed by cmake to avoid the unexpected building errors.
• Reset per compressed row memory context during tuple filtering #7270: Fix the memory leak in compressed DML batch filtering.
• Fix index column check while searching for index #7286: Fix the index column check while searching for the index.
• Add check for NULL offset for caggs built on top of caggs (#7272) #7290: Add check for null offset for continuous aggregates built on top of continuous aggregates.
• Sync FK behaviour when creating hypertable #7301: Make foreign key behavior for hypertables consistent.
• Fix chunk skipping range check bug #7318: Fix chunk skipping range filtering.
• Set license specific extension comment in install script #7320: Set the license specific extension comment in the install script.

Thanks

• @MiguelTubio for reporting and fixing the Windows build error.
• @posuch for reporting the misleading extension description in the generic loader packages.
• @snyrkill for discovering and reporting the issue with continuous aggregates built on top of continuous aggregates.

Disable-check: force-changelog-file
Disable-check: commit-count

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Please upload report for BASE (2.17.x@2959bd4). Learn more about missing BASE report.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff            @@
##             2.17.x    #7328   +/-   ##
=========================================
  Coverage          ?   82.23%           
=========================================
  Files             ?      217           
  Lines             ?    38854           
  Branches          ?    10014           
=========================================
  Hits              ?    31953           
  Misses            ?     2920           
  Partials          ?     3981           

☔ View full report in Codecov by Sentry.
📢 Have feedback on the report? Share it here.

[philkra]

LGTM

[atovpeko]

Approved with 2 minor things. Thanks!