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PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

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Re: PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what metric? Amazon took over Elastic's open source server and another major one IIRC. That was huge. PostgreSQL is not about to disappear.

They did it only after ES decided to abandon the Apache license. I doubt that Amazon would have done it if they were not forced. Redshift is also Postgres based and Amazon never released something. So based on that metric Alibaba is more open.

There would be no open source Elastic had Amazon not taken it on. It was a smart move and benefits their balance sheet to do so. The point though is that move was greater than replicating existing open source work.

Re: PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

#52
post #40

What are people/companies using currently to make their postgres database distributed these days? Currently running my app + db on Heroku in the EU and would like to scale out since latency is abysmal for users in Australia and Asia.

fly.io[1] supports Postgres clusters with read replicas in different cities[2]

It looks like AWS's Aurora Postgres doesn't support cross-region read replicas, but apparently their Aurora "Global Database" offering does[3]

- [1] https://fly.io

- [2] https://fly.io/docs/reference/postgres/#scaling-horizontally...

- [3] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide...

Re: PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

#54
post #17

Looking at their code tree, this is based on 11.2 ( https://www.postgresql.org/docs/11/release-11-2.html ): https://github.com/alibaba/PolarDB-for-PostgreSQL/blob/maste... So this is code from two years ago missing stability fixes from upstream up to 11.12, at short sight.

Looks like it, yeah.

Also, Postgres 12 introduced pluggable storage, which might help to implement a shared-nothing architecture without huge changes to vanilla Postgres (I haven't looked at how large their delta is)

Re: PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

#55
post #40

What are people/companies using currently to make their postgres database distributed these days? Currently running my app + db on Heroku in the EU and would like to scale out since latency is abysmal for users in Australia and Asia.

I think Citus is one option. Or possibly TimescaleDB

Those are meant for a single location, not cross-region distribution.

Re: PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

#56

Why wouldn’t I use cockroachDB?

I don't know, maybe you should.

CockroachDB seems to be a distributed database system written in Go which has implemented a Postgres query/wire protocol compatibility layer.

PolarDB is a Postgres fork actually using the Postgres codebase and extending it to a distributed database system. Maybe one day they can unfork because it's possible to implement PolarDB on top of Postgres as an extension and/or they contribute/get all their changes into Postgres core.

Re: PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

#59
post #40

What are people/companies using currently to make their postgres database distributed these days? Currently running my app + db on Heroku in the EU and would like to scale out since latency is abysmal for users in Australia and Asia.

The simple solution is to run Postgres replicas in those regions and do local reads for your app while directing the writes to the master region. This works well for read-heavy apps, and you can also put the master in a geographically central location to help with write latency.

If you need cross-region multi-master then I recommend something like CockroachDB or Yugabyte that have regional distribution as a core feature.

Re: PolarDB, yet another open source database system based on PostgreSQL

#60
post #40

What are people/companies using currently to make their postgres database distributed these days? Currently running my app + db on Heroku in the EU and would like to scale out since latency is abysmal for users in Australia and Asia.

I’m glancing over the Heroku Postgres docs and they seem to offer easy to set up read replicas called “followers”. Wouldn’t this work for you?
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