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Loadable modules adding data types, functions, or index methods to PostgreSQL, installed per database via CREATE EXTENSION. Managed services may restrict them.
Tiger Data says pg_vectorsearch built a 100M-vector index in 49 minutes where pgvector's HNSW took 42 hours on the same 512 GiB machine. A DEV Community review calls the query win real and the build comparison tilted. The extension is still alpha.
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Tiger Data says its pg_vectorsearch alpha answers at a 6 ms median and 95% recall on 100M vectors in its own tests. Its release notes say filtered queries can come back short of LIMIT, so we would keep pgvector HNSW in place for now.
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AWS has embedded DuckDB in Aurora PostgreSQL from versions 17.11 and 18.6, so one SQL query can join live rows with Iceberg and Parquet tables in S3. Reverse-ETL jobs that exist only for that join can be retired if the database instance has room for the lake scans.
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Microsoft-led DocumentDB 0.117 adds scalar $group index pushdown, so Postgres can sum an indexed field for a MongoDB query that carries no hint. Because the feature ships off, MongoDB users weighing DocumentDB swap a query hint for a server setting.
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DocumentDB 0.116, released August 20, turns on prefix sort pushdown by default, so $group can skip a blocking sort when its key leads the sort order. On the Postgres extension, the index now decides whether grouping waits for all its input or streams.
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DocumentDB 0.116 lets a $group on PostgreSQL jump between distinct index values, so 100 groups over 50,000 entries need only 100 index reads. The saving scales with rows per value, and the published test had 500 per value with the feature switched on by flag.
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A dev.to walkthrough builds the whole retrieval path on pgvector and the azure_ai extension inside Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The costs land in the DDL, the extension allowlist, and a transaction that waits on an HTTP call.
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