Greenplum 7 beta.3 released!!!

[Ashwin Agrawal]

The Greenplum Team announces that the Beta.3 release of Greenplum
Database 7 is now available for [download]
(https://github.com/greenplum-db/gpdb/releases/tag/7.0.0-beta.3).

Please continue to try it out and provide your feedback to further
improve GPDB7.

Team continues to add exciting features and make GPDB7 more stable.
Around 211 commits were made on top of 7.0.0-beta.2 for
7.0.0-beta.3.

Greenplum 7 Beta.3 Highlights (not full list)

=================================

- Altering a column type for AO/CO tables requires only rewriting the
  column files for the specified column instead of the whole table.

- The output of EXPLAIN ANALYZE VERBOSE now displays further
  information about JIT compilation.

- Index-only scans are now enabled for append-optimized tables to
  improve performance.

- The command pg_dump includes options to include or exclude leaf
  tables of partitioned tables.

- The server configuration parameter vacuum_cost_page_miss has a new
  default value of 2.

- New function and views gp_toolkit.get_column_size(oid),
  gp_toolkit.gp_column_size, and gp_toolkit.gp_column_size_summary,
  that you can use to view column size and compression ratio for a
  given AO/AOCO table.

- Greenplum Database now includes the following autovacuum server
  configuration parameters: autovacuum_freeze_max_age,
  autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay, autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor and
  autovacuum_vacuum_threshold.

- The pg_stat_* and pg_statio_* system views now provide information
  for append-optimized tables and their auxiliary tables.

- New views that you can use to access progress reporting statistics
  during COPY and pg_basebackup operations.

- The Greenplum Query Optimizer (GPORCA) now supports Dynamic
  Partition Elimination (DPE) for right joins.

- Greenplum Database now includes a new server configuration parameter
  -- gp_quicklz_fallback which determines how Greenplum Database
  behaves when legacy SQL specifies a compression type of quicklz,
  which is no longer supported. If you do not set this parameter to
  true, specifying a compression type of quicklz will error out.

- Greenplum Database now includes gp_ system views corresponding to pg_ system views:
  Each is a cluster-wide view that displays from every primary segment
  the information reported by its corresponding pg_ system view. For
  example, the new gp_stat_user_tables view is a cluster-wide view that
  displays the pg_stat_user_tables information from every primary
  segment. Each new gp_ system view has identical columns to its
  corresponding pg_ system view plus this additional column:
  gp_segment_id

- Un-assign query from resource group based on cost

- Unassign pure-catalog query from resource group

- Improvement to get correlation from segments instead of calculating it on QD

- Ban enums as distribution and partition keys

- Greenplum 7 README for Rocky8 to build OSS GPDB

- Added column filenum to pg_attribute_encoding

- Enable `Copy partitioned_table TO file` for better performance

- Collect vacuum stats for append-optimized tables

Beta Information
=============

Greenplum Beta releases are pre-release testing versions before a new
release is generally available. We release these to the public for
testing before our final release. Greenplum Betas are not meant for
use in production systems. Beta releases are especially helpful for
developers of platforms, drivers, tools, and utilities that depend
upon Greenplum Database in order to prepare for changes in the new
version.

We strongly advise against using Beta versions of Greenplum Database
in production installations or active development projects. While the
Greenplum Database code is continuously subject to several automated
and manual tests, Beta releases might have serious bugs. Features are
subject to changes that are backward incompatible at any time during
the development of the Betas and could possibly be removed altogether.


Testing for Bugs & Compatibility
=========================

The stability of each Greenplum Database release greatly depends on
you, the community, to test the upcoming version with your workloads
and testing tools in order to find bugs and regressions before general
availability. As this is a Beta, changes to database behaviors,
feature details, and APIs are possible. Your feedback and testing will
help determine the final adjustments to the new features, so please
test. The quality of user testing helps determine when we can make a
final release.

You can report bugs using [github
issues](https://github.com/greenplum-db/gpdb/issues).

Links
====

- [7.0.0-beta.3 Release](https://github.com/greenplum-db/gpdb/releases/tag/7.0.0-beta.3)
- [Greenplum Version 7 Youtube Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4duir3J-8GX9EmTGRXoBE9vTKFWHsXLC)
- [Generated Columns In Greenplum 7](https://greenplum.org/generated-columns-in-greenplum-7/)
- [Improving Backup Performance And Reliability With Distributed Snapshots](https://greenplum.org/improving-backup-performance-and-reliability-with-distributed-snapshots/)
- [Partition In Greenplum 7: Recursion And Inheritance](https://greenplum.org/partition-in-greenplum-7-recursion-and-inheritance/)
- [Partition In Greenplum 7: What’s New](https://greenplum.org/partition-in-greenplum-7-whats-new/)
- [GP7: Clustering AO/CO Tables](https://greenplum.org/gp7-clustering-aoco-tables/)

-- 

Ashwin Agrawal (VMware)