Clock's ticking on PostgreSQL 12, but not everyone is ready to say goodbye

Users of PostgreSQL 12 have less than a month to prepare for the database to enter end of life and become unsupported.

Data from open source database support company Percona suggests that around 11 percent of PostgreSQL databases in the wild are still on version 12, first introduced in 2019.

First developed in the 1980s, PostgreSQL has been open source since the mid-1990s, managed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group. Its policy is that after a major release's five-year anniversary, it will have one last minor release containing any fixes, and then will be considered end of life (EOL) and no longer supported.

Telemetry data from Percona's database management product, PMM, also shows that in a recent 90-day period, around 7 percent of newly created database PostgreSQL instances are on one variant of the 12 iteration. German vendor SAP has warned about the end of life on its website, while AWS, which provides PostgreSQL services RDS and Aurora, has said RDS users should plan to update their instances.

AWS also announced that in February next year, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-compatible edition, major version 12.x, will reach the end of standard support. "We recommend that you proactively upgrade your databases running Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL major version 12 to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL 13 or higher at your convenience before February 28, 2025," it said.

Alastair Turner, Technical Evangelist at Percona, said the popularity of cloud database services was part of why the version about to enter end of life remains widely used. "The people who may then feel they have to retest their entire application, maybe just because internal processes require it, are developers."

Another reason aging database versions remain in use is that they often get scheduled for upgrades, but this is usually tied to broader modernization programs, which can be prone to delays.

"There is a belief that it's going to be over quite quickly, and you know that they'll be able to replace this app's functionality, and in any big enough estate that just goes wrong every now and then," Turner said.

The PostgreSQL community announced the availability of 17 in September. Despite boasting incremental backup in pg_basebackup for the first time and new maintenance options, it is not likely to become the destination for most users looking to move off PostgreSQL 12.

As users get their heads around 17, PostgreSQL 16 is the most likely landing place, Turner said.

He warned that some of the standards compliance was tweaked in versions between 12 and 16, which users should be aware of before migration. Also, there has been a change in how the database creates objects in the default schema. "By default, everyone had it, and in 15 that default was moved to create a more secure default position," Turner said. "If you're upgrading an application in place, you probably won't see any problems, but [if users are] trying to create their database structures the first time they start up, they may bump into some issues." ®