This is a Blog for PostgreSQL Lovers

Saying “yes” to MariaDB Xpand doesn’t mean saying “no” to PostgreSQL.

Turning our award-winning distributed SQL implementation of Xpand into an extension for PostgreSQL provides users with a transparent way to run their PostgreSQL-based applications at a scale not possible with a single-node database architecture. Replication commonly used with open source databases for PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB can help provide read-scale and failover but does not address write-scale and continuous availability. Xpand is a true multi-writer, any node can be written to and participates fully in sharing all database load.

A brief history of PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL’s widespread adoption and popularity among developers are remarkable. Initially, PostgreSQL began as a research project at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of ACM Turing Award-Winner Michael Stonebraker. Today, PostgreSQL has become ubiquitous in the open source database world. Its popularity has grown rapidly due to its ability to handle complex workloads and its robust support for ACID transactions, which ensures data consistency and reliability. However, despite its many benefits, PostgreSQL can present certain challenges to users, particularly when it comes to scaling and high availability.

Working the Challenges

Over the years, these challenges have prompted several attempts to build a better PostgreSQL using various approaches. These include geo-distributed, strongly consistent databases like CockroachDB, YugabyteDB, and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL (Citus); multi-master, bi-directional, logical replication like EDB PostgreSQL Distributed and pgEdge; and decoupling compute from storage, log-based approaches like AWS Aurora and Google Cloud AlloyDB.

PostgreSQL with Xpand

While each of these approaches has some interesting properties, each also has significant drawbacks when compared to PostgreSQL with Xpand, particularly in performance and scalability. Our unique approach combines the flexibility of unforked (unmodified) PostgreSQL with a superior, strongly consistent, distributed database backend. PostgreSQL with Xpand leverages PostgreSQL’s native extensibility features to create a combination of complete SQL statement pushdown, appropriate data type conversions, and a flexible SQL statement pushdown approach for cases where Xpand does not currently support specific PostgreSQL-required functionality.

PostgreSQL with Xpand takes a hybrid approach to execute components of a query using a partial pushdown path for PostgreSQL-specific functionality not currently supported by Xpand. However, even when this partial pushdown path is used, the increase in query latency is minimal, and the performance benefits of Xpand are still realized.

By integrating Xpand’s distributed database as an extension of PostgreSQL, we have created a product that offers benefits that no other company can match. PostgreSQL with Xpand solves some of the key challenges associated with using PostgreSQL, making it easy for you to scale your database and improve performance while enhancing reliability.

If you’re ready to try Xpand for PostgreSQL, visit mariadb.com/Xpand4All and sign up to be notified when it’s available in SkySQL as a service. Experience the power of combining everything we love about PostgreSQL with the scalable performance and resilience of Xpand.

Don’t let PostgreSQL performance woes hold your business back. Try PostgreSQL with Xpand.