5 ms·

Vitesse X – A PostgreSQL extension module for faster queries

56 points by onderkalaci 11y ago

mrmondo 11y ago
This feels a little like 'snake oil' to me - a little short on real details and the idea of using licensed software especially with my database server does not sound like something that I want to go back to.
- quizotic 11y ago
  probably not snake oil; and 180x faster on tpch-1 is no where near physics speed. but these guys are just starting out. i'm sure they will go even faster once they pull out the stops. the nice thing about their model is that it's a pure accelerator play. plug it in and go faster, pull it out, or replace it with something else. in theory, there should be no change to the application/query layer. It should be as simple as entering "create/drop extension vitessedata;"
  - petergeoghegan 11y ago
    Sorting will be a lot faster on PostgreSQL 9.5: http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/01/abbreviated-keys-exploiting-locality-to.html http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/01/abbreviated-keys-expl... http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/04/abbreviated-keys-for-numeric-to.html http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/04/abbreviated-keys-for-... I wonder whether and to what extent Vitesse benefits from using this technique, which is fairly well known (e.g. it appears in a 1994 paper by Gray -- Alphasort). As I go into in the second link there, someone reported an order of magnitude increase in sort performance in one case. For what it's worth, I doubt that this fully accounts for why Vitesse is faster. I don't know that I'd trust my data to it, but I don't think it's snake oil, even if some of the figures shown are arguably a bit misleading.
    - ctan 11y ago
      (ck from vitesse data) We haven't exploited this technique mentioned by Peter. We will when 9.5 comes out, and we are looking at it to see if we can put it into our 9.4 extension so people can benefit from it before 9.5. The technique is sound, which should make it go even faster as plans generated by Postgres seem to be partial towards sorts. As for the trust element, yeah, we know it would take time to earn that in the market place.
aw3c2 11y ago
I am a happy postgres user for years, nothing special, just for personal projects. This site tells me so few things and sounds so flawless, that I am not sure if it is a parody or actually a product. Why would some random software be able to make my pg 8 times faster or more?
- saurik 11y ago
  Did you bother to click on any of the links, or did you just glance at the "news" page? Almost half of the links on the page ("technology", "check it out", "100% Postgres, 100X Faster for Analytics", or "(slides)") they explain how it works (and it makes sense, although I'd personally be very wary of installing this, due to not particularly trusting that it gets the implementation "correct").
  - halayli 11y ago
    You might need to update your about section on HN: > "In an attempt to avoid losing my entire life to this website, I no longer comment as often as I used to, and, when I do, unless it is related to a topic (iOS jailbreaking) where it is part of my "job" to respond, I make it something of a policy to not look at things people say in response until at least a month later."
  - aw3c2 11y ago
    I did read the Technology page but it sounded so much like buzzword bingo that I really was not sure. Thanks!
- nierman 11y ago
  Check out the Tech and Company pages as well as the slides from the recent South Bay PostgreSQL Meeetup: http://goo.gl/Mtg2W6 http://goo.gl/Mtg2W6 The founders both have strong academic and commercial experience and the advisor is Prof. Joseph Hellerstein (he has both an excellent academic reputation and good experience in industry/tech transfer). Note that TPCH is a "decision support benchmark". There are other technologies for helping postgres with these workloads as well: a column-store approach like https://github.com/citusdata/cstore_fdw https://github.com/citusdata/cstore_fdw, or the recent work on parallel sequential scans in Postgres core (http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2015/03/parallel-sequential-scan-for-postgresql.html http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2015/03/parallel-sequential-scan-f...), etc.
Aissen 11y ago
Is the confusion with vitess intentional ? https://github.com/youtube/vitess https://github.com/youtube/vitess
- Thaxll 11y ago
  Vitesse means speed in French :)
  - Aissen 11y ago
    Yup, I should know since I'm french; I just thought it wasn't nice to name two very close database "accelerators" the same way…
- ctan 11y ago
  It is not intentional. :-)
philjohn 11y ago
Having a look here, looks like the more esoteric (for most workloads) data types aren't supported: http://vitessedata.com/vitesse-x-doc http://vitessedata.com/vitesse-x-doc
- WalterGR 11y ago
  It's quite refreshing to see that it explicitly calls out data types not supported.
  - ctan 11y ago
    (ck from vitesse data) we will support many of those types eventually, and on demand. It will take time.

56 points by onderkalaci 11y ago

This feels a little like 'snake oil' to me - a little short on real details and the idea of using licensed software especially with my database server does not sound like something that I want to go back to.

quizotic 11y ago
probably not snake oil; and 180x faster on tpch-1 is no where near physics speed. but these guys are just starting out. i'm sure they will go even faster once they pull out the stops. the nice thing about their model is that it's a pure accelerator play. plug it in and go faster, pull it out, or replace it with something else. in theory, there should be no change to the application/query layer. It should be as simple as entering "create/drop extension vitessedata;"
- petergeoghegan 11y ago
  Sorting will be a lot faster on PostgreSQL 9.5: http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/01/abbreviated-keys-exploiting-locality-to.html http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/01/abbreviated-keys-expl... http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/04/abbreviated-keys-for-numeric-to.html http://pgeoghegan.blogspot.com/2015/04/abbreviated-keys-for-... I wonder whether and to what extent Vitesse benefits from using this technique, which is fairly well known (e.g. it appears in a 1994 paper by Gray -- Alphasort). As I go into in the second link there, someone reported an order of magnitude increase in sort performance in one case. For what it's worth, I doubt that this fully accounts for why Vitesse is faster. I don't know that I'd trust my data to it, but I don't think it's snake oil, even if some of the figures shown are arguably a bit misleading.
  - ctan 11y ago
    (ck from vitesse data) We haven't exploited this technique mentioned by Peter. We will when 9.5 comes out, and we are looking at it to see if we can put it into our 9.4 extension so people can benefit from it before 9.5. The technique is sound, which should make it go even faster as plans generated by Postgres seem to be partial towards sorts. As for the trust element, yeah, we know it would take time to earn that in the market place.

aw3c2 11y ago

I am a happy postgres user for years, nothing special, just for personal projects. This site tells me so few things and sounds so flawless, that I am not sure if it is a parody or actually a product. Why would some random software be able to make my pg 8 times faster or more?

saurik 11y ago
Did you bother to click on any of the links, or did you just glance at the "news" page? Almost half of the links on the page ("technology", "check it out", "100% Postgres, 100X Faster for Analytics", or "(slides)") they explain how it works (and it makes sense, although I'd personally be very wary of installing this, due to not particularly trusting that it gets the implementation "correct").
- halayli 11y ago
  You might need to update your about section on HN: > "In an attempt to avoid losing my entire life to this website, I no longer comment as often as I used to, and, when I do, unless it is related to a topic (iOS jailbreaking) where it is part of my "job" to respond, I make it something of a policy to not look at things people say in response until at least a month later."
- aw3c2 11y ago
  I did read the Technology page but it sounded so much like buzzword bingo that I really was not sure. Thanks!
nierman 11y ago
Check out the Tech and Company pages as well as the slides from the recent South Bay PostgreSQL Meeetup: http://goo.gl/Mtg2W6 http://goo.gl/Mtg2W6 The founders both have strong academic and commercial experience and the advisor is Prof. Joseph Hellerstein (he has both an excellent academic reputation and good experience in industry/tech transfer). Note that TPCH is a "decision support benchmark". There are other technologies for helping postgres with these workloads as well: a column-store approach like https://github.com/citusdata/cstore_fdw https://github.com/citusdata/cstore_fdw, or the recent work on parallel sequential scans in Postgres core (http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2015/03/parallel-sequential-scan-for-postgresql.html http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2015/03/parallel-sequential-scan-f...), etc.

Aissen 11y ago

Is the confusion with vitess intentional ? https://github.com/youtube/vitess https://github.com/youtube/vitess

Thaxll 11y ago
Vitesse means speed in French :)
- Aissen 11y ago
  Yup, I should know since I'm french; I just thought it wasn't nice to name two very close database "accelerators" the same way…
ctan 11y ago
It is not intentional. :-)

philjohn 11y ago

Having a look here, looks like the more esoteric (for most workloads) data types aren't supported: http://vitessedata.com/vitesse-x-doc http://vitessedata.com/vitesse-x-doc

WalterGR 11y ago
It's quite refreshing to see that it explicitly calls out data types not supported.
- ctan 11y ago
  (ck from vitesse data) we will support many of those types eventually, and on demand. It will take time.