Realizing the EDB Postgres AI platform vision with a unified solution for transactional, analytical, and AI workloads
Earlier today, we announced a new era for EDB, with the EDB Postgres® AI platform. With EDB Postgres AI, customers can now leverage EDB’s enterprise-grade Postgres offerings to support not just their mission-critical transactional workloads, but also their strategic analytical and AI solutions.
This means that, in addition to the core transactional database releases you have come to expect from EDB, we will now be delivering regular updates to our analytics, AI, and platform capabilities.
Our first quarterly release in the new era of EDB Postgres AI delivers key functionality to support the platform vision, including analytical and AI / vector database capabilities, single pane of glass management and observability for hybrid data estates, and an AI migration copilot.
Additionally, to meet customers’ evolving requirements for transactional workloads, we continue to refine our core enterprise-grade Postgres offerings, including updates to our database server software, tooling, and open source PostgreSQL support.
Here’s a closer look at our Q2 feature releases.
EDB Postgres AI - Platform
Hybrid data estate management using the EDB Postgres AI agent
As a hybrid solution, EDB Postgres AI enables unified management and observability over both cloud-managed and self-managed Postgres databases. This is achieved via the EDB Postgres AI agent, which enables users to connect self-managed Postgres deployments to the EDB Postgres AI Console.
Customers now have visibility of their self-managed Postgres databases, Amazon RDS Postgres databases, and EDB Postgres AI Cloud Service database clusters from a “single pane of glass” using the EDB Postgres AI Console, where they can observe metadata including OS and PG versions. Learn how to get started with the agent in our documentation.
EDB Postgres AI - Analytics and AI
EDB Postgres AI extends Postgres to analytical and AI workloads
EDB Postgres Lakehouse clusters deliver 30X faster analytical queries on average
Customers can now launch Postgres Lakehouse nodes using the EDB Postgres AI Cloud Service (formerly EDB BigAnimal) to get results of analytical (OLAP) queries much faster than from typical transactional Postgres. Postgres Lakehouse nodes are available now for customers using EDB Postgres AI - Hosted environments on AWS, and will be rolling out to additional cloud environments soon.
Postgres Lakehouse uses Apache DataFusion’s vectorized SQL query engine to execute analytical queries 30x faster on average compared to native Postgres, while still falling back to native execution when necessary. Postgres Lakehouse nodes run either EPAS or PGE as the Postgres engine, with data for analytics stored as columnar tables in object storage using the open source Delta Lake protocol. Customers can sync tables from transactional sources (initially, EDB Postgres AI Cloud Service databases) into Lakehouse Tables in Managed Storage Locations (initially, S3 object storage buckets).
To provision your first Lakehouse node in the EDB Postgres AI cloud service, see our documentation. For more information about EDB Postgres AI Lakehouse analytics, including upcoming features and deployments, contact us here.
Tech preview of EDB pgai capability that uplevels Postgres support for AI application development
Customers can now access a tech preview of the new EDB pgai capability, which uplevels Postgres as an AI database for managing AI. Built on top of Postgres vector data support, pgai enables Postgres to run LLMs and directly manage, process, search and retrieve AI data such as text documents or images to accelerate AI application development and operationalization across your company.
In this tech preview, you'll have the opportunity to explore the pgai extension and build AI-infused similarity search applications — for instance, a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) application using Postgres. RAG applications utilize a powerful combination of retrieval systems and language models to provide accurate and context-aware responses to user queries. Learn more and enroll in the tech preview here.
EDB Postgres AI - Database Server
EDB Oracle migration suite simplifies Postgres database modernization
Modernizing Oracle-to-Postgres Migrations with the EDB Migration AI Copilot
Customers can now tackle the most complex Oracle migration challenges with the release of the EDB Migration AI Copilot, an AI-driven chat interface — trained on EDB documentation — that helps resolve migration challenges, including command line and schema issues.
Customers are now equipped to complete more Oracle-to-Postgres migration-related tasks in a self-service model, with instant error resolution. The Migration AI Copilot customizes responses to customers’ questions based on their use of the EDB Migration Portal, continually evolving and learning through the use of migration-related questions from the EDB Migration Knowledge Base.
Adding new EDB Migration Toolkit Command Line options for user-specified criteria
Users can now specify objects to exclude for an additional set of object types supported by the EDB Migration Toolkit, supplementing previously available tables and views support. In addition, for the first time, users now have the ability to specify command options via a file.
Automating EDB Migration Toolkit connection retry capabilities
The EDB Migration Toolkit now performs connection retries if a connection to the destination database is lost during a data migration. The Migration Toolkit automatically handles temporary lost connections, saving time and effort by avoiding a restart of the full data migration.
Migrating PROCEDURE objects for PostgreSQL-to-PostgreSQL migrations with Migration Toolkit
With this release, EDB Migration Toolkit workflow will be enhanced, with PostgreSQL PROCEDURE objects now migrating to Postgres-based target databases.
Enhancing EDB Postgres Replication Server (EPRS) configuration options
New configuration options have been added to support the ability to retry lost target database connections during snapshot replication, which is now available as a result of the new connection retry features added to Migration Toolkit.
LiveCompare support for running on Debian 12 (x86)
Debian users who need to prepare for the June Debian 10 EOL and plan to upgrade their x86 based systems to Debian 12, now have the ability to install and run LiveCompare on those systems.
EDB Database Server Updates for PostgreSQL Community
As part of EDB’s support for the open source community’s quarterly release schedule, we completed PGE and EPAS merge updates from the latest upstream PostgreSQL, including the following:
Database DistributionsVersions Supported
PostgreSQL16.3, 15.7, 14.12, 13.15 and 12.19
EDB Postgres Extended Server16.3.0, 15.7.0, 14.12, 13.15 and 12.19
EDB Postgres Advanced Server16.3.0, 15.7.0, 14.12.0, 13.15.21 and 12.19.24
EDB Postgres® Distributed 5.5 Performance Enhancements
Read scalability improvements
EDB Postgres Distributed users can now increase client application performance by spreading their read load across multiple nodes within a region. Read scalability enhancements in PGD Proxy allow read-only queries to be routed to nodes that are members of a read-only pool. Learn more in our documentation.
New EDB extension support enhances PostgreSQL integration
EDB added support for two new PostgreSQL extensions:
- wal2json is an output plugin for logical decoding
- system_stats helps optimize performance and operational efficiency by enabling database administrators to monitor key metrics, such as CPU and memory usage, disk I/O, and network activity, directly through standard SQL queries)
With the formal packaging of these Postgres extensions, EDB testing and certification processes offer customers assurance on enterprise-grade performance, with EDB PostgreSQL experts providing dedicated support for any encountered issues.
EDB simplifies JDBC Connector retrieval with Maven Central publishing
Enterprise developers can now seamlessly integrate EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS) and EDB Postgres Extended with Java, with this Q2 release simplifying the process to retrieve the JDBC connector from Maven Central, the de facto repository for managing Java application dependencies. By simplifying the process used to connect Java applications to EPAS and EDB Postgres Extended Server, EDB provides developers with more time to focus on building innovative applications vs. retrieving needed connectors. Learn more in our documentation.
EDB Failover Manager 4.9 enhances Postgres cluster management
The latest EDB Failover Manager release improves delivery of high availability primary-standby deployment architectures using Postgres physical streaming replication, by upgrading it to use PostgreSQL JDBC Driver version 42.7.2. Learn more about EDB Failover Manager in our documentation.
EDB Postgres AI - Platform Tools
EDB Trusted Postgres Architect promotes quicker Primary/Standby topology deployments
The EDB Trusted Postgres Architect orchestration tool offers added support for configuring parameterized, flexible primary/standby architectures, making it easier and quicker to deploy primary/standby topologies. With this release, users may now specify the number of locations and nodes per location, as well as the ability to add a witness-only or disaster recovery location directly from the command line. This feature makes configuration quicker and less error-prone by reducing the amount of required editing of the config.yml file.
Support for Debian 12 on x86 has also been added.
Postgres Enterprise Manager 9.6 enhances ease of use and workflow enablement
It’s now easier than ever to integrate Postgres Enterprise Manager (PEM) with other tools, with Release 9.6 promoting data sharing with enhanced webhooks and CLIs. Similarly, PEM users can share data with colleagues by leveraging PEM reporting improvements. This release adds options to:
- Enable probes when an agent is registered using pemworker
- Use the FQDN rather than hostname when registering a PEM Agent
- Add a built-in probe and alert template for replication slot status
- Allow users to download a report from Capacity Manager
- Include the error message in e-mail notifications of failed jobs
That’s a wrap!
To learn more about EDB Postgres AI, read on here. You can get started for free using the EDB Postgres AI Cloud Service.