This release contains performance improvements and bug fixes since the 2.27.2 release. We recommend that you upgrade at the next available opportunity.
Highlighted features in TimescaleDB v2.28.0
- Faster
first()andlast()queries on compressed data. TimescaleDB derivesfirst(value, time)andlast(value, time)aggregates straight from the columnstore's batch metadata, skipping batch decompression entirely. For the "latest reading per series" lookups that time-series workloads run constantly, that means meaningfully faster recency queries with no changes to your SQL queries. - Lighter, less disruptive continuous aggregate refreshes.
refresh_continuous_aggregate()can now run incrementally in batches — the same behavior refresh policies already use — enabling breaking large manual refreshes into smaller chunks (tunable viabuckets_per_batch,max_batches_per_execution, andrefresh_newest_first) instead of one heavy operation. Refreshes also now take a lighter lock while processing the invalidation log, so they no longer block unrelated concurrent operations on the same continuous aggregate, improving behavior for concurrent workloads. - Vectorized execution now covers
CASEexpressions. TimescaleDB's columnar executor can now evaluateCASE ... WHENexpressions directly on compressed data, so queries using conditional logic stay on the fast vectorized path instead of falling back to slower row-by-row decompression. This speeds up a common pattern — conditional aggregations and computed columns over compressed history — with no query changes needed. - Add new aggregations to a continuous aggregate without rebuilding it. You can now run
ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW <cagg> ADD COLUMN <name> <type> GENERATED ALWAYS AS (<aggregate>) STOREDto add a new computed aggregate to an existing continuous aggregate in place — no more dropping and recreating the whole aggregate just to track one more metric. New data populates the column going forward, letting your rollups evolve alongside your application. (Existing rows start asNULL; a forced refresh backfills them when you need historical values.)
Deprecation Notice: PostgreSQL 15 Support
This release marks the final minor version of TimescaleDB that will support PostgreSQL 15. Starting with our next release, version 2.29.0, we will officially drop support for Postgres 15, and only support Postgres 16, 17, and 18; however, all future patch releases within the current 2.28 version cycle will continue to fully support it. We recommend planning your PostgreSQL upgrades accordingly to ensure a smooth transition.
Deprecation Notice: chunk_constraint Catalog Table
Please note that the _timescaledb_catalog.chunk_constraint table has been dropped and temporarily replaced by a view, which introduces a change to the underlying objects while maintaining current query behavior. However, this compatibility view will be completely removed in a future release. To ensure your queries remain compatible moving forward, we strongly advise transitioning to the stable contracts provided by our informational views.
Backward-Incompatible Changes
- #9934 Remove adaptive chunking
Features
- #4054 Support
ANALYZEandVACUUMon continuous aggregates by redirecting to the underlying materialization hypertable - #9125 Increase the parallelism of
SELECTqueries over compressed hypertables to approximately match the uncompressed data size - #9410 Mark
hypertableandchunkas user catalog tables - #9416 Support some forms of
CASEexpression in columnar aggregation and grouping - #9580 Add
first/lastsparse indexes to compression - #9784 Use
first/lastsparse index fororderbymetadata on new compressed chunks - #9668 Allow database owner to configure hypertables and policies
- #9701 Relax lock during continuous aggregate invalidation log processing
- #9730 Add in-memory observability for compressed chunks
- #9735 Improve
GapFillrow count estimate - #9821 Allow subquery results which are exec params as GapFill arguments
- #9825 Support
ADD COLUMNon continuous aggregates - #9842 Suppress continuous aggregate invalidation tracking during bulk loads
- #9878 Remove
chunk_constraintcatalog tracking for foreign keys - #9893 Remove
chunk_constraintcatalog tracking for non-dimensional constraints - #9903 Incremental refresh for
refresh_continuous_aggregate() - #9915 Remove
_timescaledb_catalog.chunk_constrainttable - #9938 Add
rebuild_sparse_indexfunction - #9964 Add a function to lock OSM chunk's dimension slice
- #9980 Support
first/last(value, time)inColumnarIndexScan
Bugfixes
- #9708 Guard time bucket parameter handling against bad input
- #9745 Check constraints when adding unique constraints to chunks
- #9890 Fix incremental refresh batch boundaries to align with variable-width buckets and start only where a chunk and an invalidation overlap
- #9914 Fix use-after-free in segmentwise recompression
- #9929 Fix background jobs being bumped in the queue forever and never running
- #9955 Fix wrong results when using Batch Sorted Merge with no first-last index on a non-leading order by column
- #9967 Block upgrade after downgrade with first/last indexes present
- #9976 Fix wrong results when comparing a date column to a
timestamptzvalue - #9977 Fix
COPY WHEREinto a hypertable with dropped columns - #9981 Fix set-returning functions in the sort key of
ColumnarScan - #9982 Reject
ALTER TABLE ... INHERITwhen the parent is a hypertable - #9984 Fix handling of
NOT VALID NOT NULLconstraint for query optimization - #9986 Handle
MERGE WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCEon hypertables - #9988 Fix
time_bucket_gapfillfunction detection - #10003 Block unsafe updates of unique columns on compressed chunks
- #10024 Fix
approximate_row_counthandling of Infinity - #10025 Fix rename on compressed continuous aggregates
- #10026 Fix chunk skipping near
PG_INT64_MAX
New Settings
skip_cagg_invalidation: skip continuous aggregate invalidation tracking for DML and DDL in the current session/transaction. Off by default.stats_max_chunks: set the per-database compressed chunk statistics cache capacity. Defaults to 1024 chunks; set to 0 to disable the feature.
Thanks
- @Fabian-2596 for suggesting more accurate GapFill row count estimate
- @otjdiepluong for fixing spelling mistakes in timescaledb source code comments
- @scimad and @Nosfistis for suggesting expanding coverage for gapfill arguments