According to Postgres Professional, the update is aimed at organizations that require horizontal scaling, a single point of administration, and stable operation of a distributed PostgreSQL cluster under high loads.
The release includes an optimization that selects the fastest possible query execution path when data is in the same section. This reduces latency and network load, speeding up "heavy" operations on clusters with a large number of segments. The Silk mechanism, which allows pushing operations closer to the data, has been updated. Silk now supports not only SELECT, but also UPDATE/DELETE, as well as prepared statements. In addition, Silk now supports SSL.
Row-level security policies (RLS) now work in all types of tables in a distributed cluster. This is critical for systems where data must be physically separated but logically managed centrally - banks, telecom, government customers. Support for extended password policies and global profiles has been added. It is now possible to specify system users for whom authorization events are not distributed between nodes, locking is prohibited, and work on backup servers is allowed.
Improved control over consistency and transaction snapshots (READ COMMITTED + CSN). Two READ COMMITTED modes have been added with or without CSN snapshot support. The release includes a number of key extensions that improve Shardman's security, stability, and compatibility with new PostgreSQL components.