For PostgreSQL questions specific to version 12.
PostgreSQL 12 is a major release of the PostgreSQL RDBMS.
Improvements include, but are not limited to:
- performance improvements for partitioning and indexes
- CTEs (
WITH
queries) are by default inlined for better query performance - JSON path queries per SQL/JSON specification
- support for case- and accent-insensitive ICU collations
- (stored) generated columns
- extended statistics for “most common values”
- page checksums can be enabled and disabled without
initdb
- authentication: support for encrypted GSSAPI authentication and LDAP server discovery
- “pluggable storage” to add different table storage methods
More information regarding the release is available here.