2. Difference betweenPostgres Pro Standard andPostgreSQL
Postgres Pro provides the most actualPostgreSQL version with some additional patches applied and extensions added. It includes new features developed by Postgres Professional, as well as third-party patches already accepted by the PostgreSQL community for the upcomingPostgreSQL versions.Postgres Pro Standard users thus have early access to important features and fixes.
Note
Postgres Pro Standard is provided under the following license:https://postgrespro.com/products/postgrespro/eula. Make sure to review the license terms before downloadingPostgres Pro Standard.
Postgres Pro Standard provides the following enhancements overPostgreSQL:
- Covering indexes. (See the
INCLUDEdescription inCREATE INDEX.) - Improved deadlock detection mechanism that does not cause performance degradation.
- Reduced memory consumption in complex queries that involve multiple tables.
- Displaying planning time in the output of theauto_explain module.
- NUL byte replacement with the specified ASCII code while loading data using the
COPY FROMcommand. (Seenul_byte_replacement_on_import parameter description.) - ICU collation support on all platforms to provide platform-independent sort for various locales. By default, the
icucollation provider is used for all locales exceptCandPOSIX. (SeeSection 22.2.2.) - PTRACK implementation, which enablespg_probackup to track page changes on the fly when creating incremental backups.
- Changing parameters in
recovery.confwithout restarting the server. - Consistent reads on standby servers. (SeeWAITLSN.)
- Improvements for command-line editing usingWinEditLine in the Windows version ofpsql, including autocomplete support in psql console and changing thepsql default encoding to UTF-8.
- Unified structure of binary installation packages across all Linux distributions, which facilitates migration between them and allows to install differentPostgreSQL-based products side by side, without any conflicts. (SeeChapter 16.)
Postgres Pro Standard also includes the following additional modules:
- dump_stat module that allows to save and restore database statistics when dumping/restoring the database.
- fasttrun module that provides transaction-unsafe function to truncate temporary tables without growing
pg_classsize. - fulleq module that provides additional equivalence operator for compatibility withMicrosoft SQL Server.
- hunspell-dict module that provides dictionaries for several languages.
- jsquery module provides a specific language for effective index-supported querying of JSONB data.
- mamonsu monitoring service, which is implemented as aZabbix agent.
- mchar module that provides additional data type for compatibility withMicrosoft SQL Server.
- online_analyze module that provides a set of changes to immediately update statistics after
INSERT,UPDATE,DELETEorSELECT INTOoperations applied for affected tables. - pgbouncer connection pooler.
- pg_pathman module that provides optimized partitioning mechanism and functions to manage partitions.
- pg_probackup, a backup and recovery manager.
- pgpro_controldata, an application to display control information of aPostgreSQL/Postgres Pro database cluster and compatibility information for a cluster and/or server.
- pg_query_state module that enables you to get the current state of query execution for a backend.
- pg_repack utility for reorganizing tables.
- pg_variables module that provides functions for working with variables of various types.
- pg_tsparser module, which is an alternative text search parser.
- plantuner module that provides hints for the planner to disable or enable indexes for query execution.
- shared_ispell module that enables storing dictionaries in shared memory.
- sr_plan module that allows to save and restore query plans.
Postgres Pro Standard releases followPostgreSQL releases, though sometimes occur more frequently. ThePostgres Pro Standard versioning scheme is based on thePostgreSQL one and has an additional decimal place.