Release 2.21.0

[timescale-automation]

2.21.0 (2025-07-08)

This release contains performance improvements and bug fixes since the 2.20.3 release. We recommend that you upgrade at the next available opportunity.

Highlighted features in TimescaleDB v2.21.0

• The attach & detach chunks feature allows manually adding or removing chunks from a hypertable with uncompressed chunks, similar to PostgreSQL’s partition management.
• Continued improvement of backfilling into the columnstore, achieving up to 2.5x speedup for constrained tables, by introducing caching logic that boosts throughput for writes to compressed chunks, bringing INSERT performance close to that of uncompressed chunks.
• Optimized DELETE operations on the columstore through batch-level deletions of non-segmentby keys in the filter condition, greatly improving performance to up to 42x faster in some cases, as well as reducing bloat, and lowering resource usage.
• The heavy lock taken in Continuous Aggregate refresh was relaxed, enabling concurrent refreshes for non-overlapping ranges and eliminating the need for complex customer workarounds.
• [tech preview] Direct Compress is an innovative TimescaleDB feature that improves high-volume data ingestion by compressing data in memory and writing it directly to disk, reducing I/O overhead, eliminating dependency on background compression jobs, and significantly boosting insert performance.

Sunsetting of the hypercore access method
We made the decision to deprecate hypercore access method (TAM) with the 2.21.0 release. It was an experiment, which did not show the signals we hoped for and will be sunsetted in TimescaleDB 2.22.0, scheduled for September 2025. Upgrading to 2.22.0 and higher will be blocked if TAM is still in use. Since TAM’s inception in 2.18.0, we learned that btrees were not the right architecture. The recent advancements in the columnstore—such as more performant backfilling, SkipScan, adding check constraints, and faster point queries—put the columnstore close to or on par with TAM without the storage from the additional index. We apologize for the inconvenience this action potentially causes and are here to assist you during the migration process.

Migration path

do $$
declare   
   relid regclass;
begin
   for relid in
       select cl.oid from pg_class cl
       join pg_am am on (am.oid = cl.relam)
       where am.amname = 'hypercore'
   loop
       raise notice 'converting % to heap', relid::regclass;
       execute format('alter table %s set access method heap', relid);
   end loop;
end
$$;

Features

• #8081 Use JSON error code for job configuration parsing
• #8100 Support splitting compressed chunks
• #8131 Add policy to process hypertable invalidations
• #8141 Add function to process hypertable invalidations
• #8165 Reindex recompressed chunks in compression policy
• #8178 Add columnstore option to CREATE TABLE WITH
• #8179 Implement direct DELETE on non-segmentby columns
• #8182 Cache information for repeated upserts into the same compressed chunk
• #8187 Allow concurrent Continuous Aggregate refreshes
• #8191 Add option to not process hypertable invalidations
• #8196 Show deprecation warning for TAM
• #8208 Use NULL compression for bool batches with all null values like the other compression algorithms
• #8223 Support for attach/detach chunk
• #8265 Set incremental Continous Aggregate refresh policy on by default
• #8274 Allow creating concurrent continuous aggregate refresh policies
• #8314 Add support for timescaledb_lake in loader
• #8209 Add experimental support for Direct Compress of COPY
• #8341 Allow quick migration from hypercore TAM to (columnstore) heap

Bugfixes

• #8153 Restoring a database having NULL compressed data
• #8164 Check columns when creating new chunk from table
• #8294 The "vectorized predicate called for a null value" error for WHERE conditions like x = any(null::int[]).
• #8307 Fix missing catalog entries for bool and null compression in fresh installations
• #8323 Fix DML issue with expression indexes and BHS

GUCs

• enable_direct_compress_copy: Enable experimental support for direct compression during COPY, default: off
• enable_direct_compress_copy_sort_batches: Enable batch sorting during direct compress COPY, default: on
• enable_direct_compress_copy_client_sorted: Correct handling of data sorting by the user is required for this option, default: off

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 82.08%. Comparing base (dd55201) to head (f80b5f1).
Report is 5 commits behind head on 2.21.x.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           2.21.x    #8325      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   82.26%   82.08%   -0.19%     
==========================================
  Files         257      257              
  Lines       48858    48830      -28     
  Branches    12318    12314       -4     
==========================================
- Hits        40195    40082     -113     
- Misses       3741     3900     +159     
+ Partials     4922     4848      -74     

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[atovpeko]

A few nits