In the case of YugabyteDB, here is how we avoid "excessive number" of networks hops - true Index Only Scan. PostgreSQL doesn't store the MVCC visibility in ind

In the case of YugabyteDB, here is how we avoid "excessive number" of networks hops - true Index Only Scan. PostgreSQL doesn't store the MVCC visibility in indexes and have to look at the table even in case of Index Only Scan. YugabyteDB has a different implementation of MVCC with no bloat, no vacuum and true Index Only Scan. Here is an example: https://dev.to/yugabyte/boosts-secondary-index-queries-with-index-only-scan-5e7j https://dev.to/yugabyte/boosts-secondary-index-queries-with-... This is also used for reference table (duplicate covering indexes in each regions) - Batching reads and writes. It is not a problem to add 10ms because you join two tables or check a foreign key. What would be problematic is doing that for each rows. YugabyteDB batches the read/write operations as much as possible. Here are two examples: https://dev.to/franckpachot/series/25365 https://dev.to/franckpachot/series/25365 - Pushdowns to avoid sending rows that are discarded later. Each node can apply PostgreSQL expressions to offload filtering to the storage nodes. Examples: https://dev.to/yugabyte/yugabytedb-predicate-push-down-pbb https://dev.to/yugabyte/yugabytedb-predicate-push-down-pbb - Loose index scan. With YugabyteDB LSM-Tree indexes, one index scan can read multiple ranges, which avoids multiple roundtrips. An example: https://dev.to/yugabyte/select-distinct-pushdown-to-do-a-loose-index-scan-skip-scan-5e0p https://dev.to/yugabyte/select-distinct-pushdown-to-do-a-loo... - Locality of transaction table. If a transaction touches to only one node, or zone, or region, a local transaction table is used, and is promoted to the right level depending on what the transaction reads and writes. Most of the times when I've seen people asking to store tables together, it was premature optimization, based on opinions rather than facts. When they try (with the right indexes of course) they appreciate that the distribution is an implementation detail that the application doesn't have to know. Of course, there are more and more optimizations in each release. If you have a PostgreSQL application and see low performance, please open a git issue. I'm also working for Yugabyte as Developer Advocate. I don't always feel the need to precise it as I'm writing about facts, not marketing opinions, and who pays my salary has no influence on the response time I see in execution plans ;)