The Curious Case of Google's AlloyDB

Google launched AlloyDB in 2022 with two claims: "fully compatible with PostgreSQL", and "up to 100x faster than standard PostgreSQL" for analytical queries. Four years on, I haven't seen it gain significant traction. That's a subjective view, but I spend enough time around PostgreSQL people to notice what they actually run. When they ask me what AlloyDB actually is, I can point to features, but I can't honestly say what it delivers. For the last 12 months I have been running evaluations of AlloyDB, and this article covers most of my findings. I tried to keep it as objective as the topic allows, and where it isn't, the text says so. What I won't pretend to keep objective is the verdict, and the verdict turns less on any single feature than on where the compatibility stops. What "fully compatible" covers is the wire protocol. psql connects, ORMs work, migrating means changing one hostname in a connection string. What it doesn't cover is nearly everything below the query executor. The…