The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the first beta release of PostgreSQL 9.6 is available for download. This release contains previews of all of the features which will be available in the final release of version 9.6, although some details will change before then. Users are encouraged to begin testing their applications against this latest release.

Major Features of 9.6

Version 9.6 includes significant changes and exciting enhancements including:

• Parallel sequential scans, joins and aggregates
• Support for consistent, read-scaling clusters through multiple synchronous standbys and “remote_apply” synchronous commit.
• Full text search for phrases
• postgres_fdw can now execute sorts, joins, UPDATEs and DELETEs on the remote server
• Decreased autovacuum impact on big tables by avoiding “refreezing” old data.

In particular, parallel execution should bring a noticeable increase in performance to supported queries.

Source: PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 1 Released