The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the first beta release of PostgreSQL 9.5 is available for download. This release should contain all features and APIs which will be in the final release with few, if any, changes. Users should begin testing their applications against 9.5 Beta 1 in preparation for the final release.
Many bugs and issues reported by our users and contributors have been fixed since the release of Alpha2. These include:
In particular, the semantics of Row Level Security have been changed to be consistent with the existing PostgreSQL GRANT-based permissions system. As an example, RLS now applies both the INSERT policies and the SELECT policies when INSERT with RETURNING is used. Users should test the RLS application of RLS policies and re-test any existing RLS configuration to ensure that there are no regressions for their use-cases. For more information, see the documentation on Create Policy and RLS.
If you reported an issue while testing PostgreSQL 9.5, please download Beta1 and test whether that issue has been fixed. If you have not yet tested version 9.5, now is the time for you to help out PostgreSQL development. Known issues which are still open are listed on the Open Items page.
This is first beta release of version 9.5, indicating that very few user-visible feature changes are expected before final release. The PostgreSQL Project will release additional betas as required for testing, followed by one or more release candidates, until the final release in late 2015. For more information, and suggestions on how to test the betas, see the Beta Testing page.
Full documentation and release notes of the new version is available online and also installs with PostgreSQL. Also see the What's New page for details on some features.