ClickHouse 26.4 ships with 39 new features, 45 performance optimizations, and 238 bug fixes. Key highlights include expanded SQL standard compatibility (VALUES as table expressions with column aliasing, PostgreSQL-style EXTRACT units, SET TIME ZONE syntax, NATURAL JOIN, and compound INTERVAL literals), faster COUNT DISTINCT on high-core-count machines (3–15x speedup on 288-core machines via reduced thread spawning and single-pass hash table merging), improved EXPLAIN PLAN output with human-readable expressions and output column labels, LIKE/ILIKE queries now leveraging inverted text indexes for ~3x speedup, and a new JSONAllValues function enabling text index creation over JSON columns for ~50% faster JSON subcolumn filtering.
Table of contents
New contributors #SQL compatibility: VALUES as table expression, EXTRACT, SET TIME ZONE #LIKE uses text index #Faster COUNT DISTINCT #Even prettier EXPLAIN #JSONAllValues + text index #Sort: