## Schema-based sharding for PostgreSQL Citus 12 adds a new and easy way to scale your Postgres database—schema-based sharding. Unlike row-based sharding, where tables are distributed based on the value in the distribution column, schema-based sharding transparently shards your database by schema name. This new model enables new workloads, that were either hard or impossible to achieve with row-based sharding, most notably microservices and non-homogenous per tenant schemas. So now, you may have a choice based upon the needs of your application—row-based sharding or schema-based sharding.
In addition to schema-based sharding Citus 12 also includes: * Sampling in tenant monitoring which improves performance * A change to the default rebalancing strategy which is now "by_disk_size" * Improved MERGE support ## Where to find the Citus 12.0 Blog post, Release Notes, & Release Party Livestream __Citus 12 blog post__: Read [Marco’s 12.0 post](https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2023/07/18/citus-12-schema-based-sharding-for-postgres/) for more insight on the new features and improvement in Citus 12 __Release notes__: Get all the nitty gritty details on the [Citus 12.0 updates page](https://www.citusdata.com/updates/v12-0/). __Watch the Citus 12 release party__: [The release party](https://www.youtube.com/live/_3UPL-EVwKA)—including demos and Q&A—is available to watch on YouTube. ## About the Citus database extension Citus is a distributed database built entirely as an [open source extension for PostgreSQL](https://youtu.be/JwjjUT8K7po). With Citus, you can create tables that are transparently distributed or replicated across a cluster of PostgreSQL nodes. Citus is available as [open source](https://www.citusdata.com/download/) and also as a [managed service on Azure](https://aka.ms/docs-citus-on-azure)
