# About This Document

> Purpose, audience, scope, software versions, notation, and responsibility statement.

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LLMS index: [llms.txt](/en/llms.txt)

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<div class="feature-source-note"><span class="feature-edition-badge">GA</span><span><strong>Source pages:</strong> PDF 5-6</span><span><a href="https://github.com/nori-shinoda/documents/blob/1773200c5362476c4a549222b7d17fa91f546cae/postgresql16_ga_new_features_en_20230919-1.pdf">Original PDF on GitHub</a></span></div>

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### 1.1 Purpose {#pg16-1-1-purpose}

The purpose of this document is to provide information about the major new features of open-source RDBMS PostgreSQL 16 (16.0).

### 1.2 Audience {#pg16-1-2-audience}

This document is written for engineers who already know PostgreSQL, such as installation, basic management, etc.

### 1.3 Scope {#pg16-1-3-scope}

This document describes the major difference between PostgreSQL 15 (15.4) and PostgreSQL 16 (16.0). As a general rule, this document examines the features of behavior change. This document does not describe and verify all new features. In particular, the following new features are not included.

- Bugfix

- Performance improvement by changing internal behavior

- Improvement of regression test

- Operability improvement by the psql command tab input

- Improvement of the pgbench command

- Improvement of documentation, modify typos in the source code

- Refactoring without a change in behavior

### 1.4 Software Version {#pg16-1-4-software-version}

The contents of this document have been verified for the following versions and platforms.

**Table 1.** Version

| Software | Version |
| --- | --- |
| PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL 15.4 (for comparison) PostgreSQL 16 (16.0) GA (September 11, 2023 20:30:14) |
| Operating System | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Update 5 (x86-64) |
| Configure options | --with-ssl=openssl --with-python --with-lz4 --with-zstd --with-llvm --withicu --with-libxml |

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### 1.5 The Question, comment, and Responsibility {#pg16-1-5-the-question-comment-and-responsibility}

The contents of this document are not an official opinion of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Japan, G.K. The author and affiliation company do not take any responsibility for the problem caused by the mistake of contents. If you have any comments for this document, please contact Noriyoshi Shinoda ([noriyoshi.shinoda@hpe.com](mailto:noriyoshi.shinoda@hpe.com)), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Japan, G.K.

### 1.6 Notation {#pg16-1-6-notation}

This document contains examples of the execution of the command or SQL statement. Execution examples are described according to the following rules:

**Table 2.** Examples of notation

| Notation | Description |
| --- | --- |
| # | Shell prompt for Linux root user. |
| $ | Shell prompt for Linux general user. |
| Bold | The user input string. |
| postgres=# | The psql command prompt for PostgreSQL administrator. |
| postgres=> | The psql command prompt for PostgreSQL general user. |
| Underline | Important output items. |
| Underline <<PASSWORD>> | Important output items. Replaced by password string. |
| … | Indicates that it is omitted. |

The syntax is described in the following rules:

**Table 3.** Syntax rules

| Notation | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Italic | Replaced by the name of the object which users use, or the other syntax. |
| [ ] | Indicate that it can be omitted. |
| { A \| B } | Indicate that it is possible to select A or B. |
| … | General syntax. It is the same as the previous version. |