Skip to content

1 About This Document

Purpose, audience, scope, software versions, notation, and responsibility statement.
GASource pages: PDF 5-7Original PDF on GitHub

PDF page 5

1.1 Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide information about the major new features of open-source RDBMS PostgreSQL 18 (18.0).

1.2 Audience

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

1.3 Scope

This document describes the major differences between PostgreSQL 17 (17.5) and PostgreSQL 18 (18.0). 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

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

PDF page 6

SoftwareVersion
PostgreSQLPostgreSQL 17.5 (for comparison) PostgreSQL 18 (18.0) (2025/09/22 20:15)
Operating SystemRed Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Update 5 (x86-64)
Configure options–with-ssl=openssl –with-lz4 –with-zstd –with-llvm –with-libxml –enable-injection-points –with-libnuma –with-liburing –with-libcurl
Table 1 Version

1.5 The Question, Comment, and Responsibility

The contents of this document are not an official opinion of PostgreSQL Global Development Group. 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@gmail.com).

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:

NotationDescription
#Shell prompt for Linux root user.
$Shell prompt for Linux general user.
BoldThe user input string.
postgres=#The psql command prompt used by PostgreSQL users with the SUPERUSER attribute.
postgres=>The psql command prompt used by PostgreSQL users without the SUPERUSER attribute.
UnderlineImportant output items.
«PASSWORD»Replaced by password string.
…Indicates that it is omitted.
Table 2 Examples of notation

The syntax is described in the following rules:

PDF page 7

NotationDescription
ItalicReplaced 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.
Table 3 Syntax rules