AliPG is Alibaba Cloud's PostgreSQL-compatible database engine, commercially available since 2015. It powers ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL and supports PostgreSQL 10 and later. AliPG has been running stably for years and supports the services inside Alibaba Group and on Alibaba Cloud. Compared to open source PostgreSQL, AliPG delivers measurable performance gains, improved stability through a Platform as a Service (PaaS) architecture, and a broader set of enterprise security features.
Performance
AliPG delivers significant speed improvements over open source PostgreSQL for compute-intensive workloads:
| Workload | Improvement |
|---|---|
| Image recognition and vector similarity search | Tens of thousands of times faster |
| Real-time precision marketing and user profiling | Thousands of times faster |
| GIS-based Mod operator for mobile object processing | 50 times faster than open source PostGIS |
For implementation details, see:
Stability
AliPG runs on a PaaS architecture that decouples compute from infrastructure management. This architecture provides three stability benefits over self-managed PostgreSQL:
Connection optimization and resource isolation are handled at the platform level, reducing operational overhead.
Multi-tenant scalability: each RDS instance supports tens of thousands of schemas.
Metadata management: you can manage a large amount of metadata at the platform level.
The PaaS model also allows you to transform traditional software from license-based services to subscription-based services, giving the platform control over resource scheduling and failover.
Security
AliPG is certified against leading national and international security standards, which supports enterprises during financing and listing processes that require institutional security scores.
Security enhancements over open source PostgreSQL:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Sensitive data encryption | Encrypts passwords and sensitive content in dynamic views, shared memory, the dblink extension, historical commands, and audit logs |
| Bug fixes | Patches function-related bugs found in open source PostgreSQL |
| Always Confidential Database | Encrypts sensitive data columns so that data is transmitted, computed, and stored entirely in ciphertext. See Overview |
| Semi-synchronous mode | Configures a protection level for your RDS instance: maximum protection, maximum availability, or maximum performance. See Set the protection level of an ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL instance |
| Logical replication failover slot | Prevents primary/secondary switchovers from affecting the reliability of logical replication. See Logical Replication Slot Failover |
| Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) | Encrypts and decrypts data files in real time to protect data privacy of users. See Overview |
| SSL encryption | Encrypts connections between database clients and RDS instances. See Configure SSL encryption |