Bumping this old thread to clarify a few points. As an initial note on terminology, a "server" can be called a server, an instance, a server instance, or in PostgreSQL's (PG hereafter) case, a "DB Cluster." They all are used interchangeably in the wild to mean the same thing, with perhaps "server" being the most ambiguous. And that thing is a running process that is listening to (typically) a single port and handing connections off to individual threads or processes (or some other construct). The comments below use the word "instance" for consistency and brevity.
MariaDB As mentioned by others, MariaDB (and MySQL proper, both hereafter referred to as MySQL) instances only support a single database. The CREATE DATABASE statement is a de facto synonym for CREATE SCHEMA (it is disappointing that MySQL and MariaDB docs still do not mention this significant fact). To disabuse those who believe MySQL support multiple databases, query any of the INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables and for all those that have the *_CATALOG column (CATALOG is a synonym for DATABASE), notice every row in every table that shows a catalog column, they all say "def", as in default. Further, the identifier used in CREATE DATABASE will show up in INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables in *_SCHEMA columns. MySQL supports one and two-part object naming for DML and it supports foreign data access using the Federated (deprecated in MariaDB) and FederatedX (MariaDB) storage engines. One-part names use the currently selected schema (via USE statement) along with <object_name>. Two-part names are <schema_name>.<object_name>. Foreign data (e.g. tables) are also accessed using two-part names and there are limitations on what queries can be used with them (I believe they can be organized in a way the one-part names would work as well). I'm unaware of how advanced the pushdown optimizations have become, but the concept of pushdown is critical to understand both for the MySQL storage engines as well as for the Federated* "foreign data wrappers" (FDW). To summarize, all MySQL instances have a single database called "def" and there is no way to create another database on a single instance at this time (MySQL 9.2, MariaDB 11.8). To have more than one database currently requires running additional instances of MySQL on a different port. The idea that there are "high performance cross-database queries" in MySQL is simply incorrect at this time. There are high-performance cross-schema queries in MySQL, as there are in Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL hereafter) and PG. Note: MariaDB is planning on supporting real databases in 12.0 and they will be called CATALOGs, as some other RDMSs do. See: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/create-catalog/ It's a big TBD on how well this will perform with InnoDB and other storage engines for cross-catalog queries (if that will even possible). MSSQL (On-prem, VM, Azure SQL Managed Instance) MSSQL supports one, two, three and four-part object naming. One part names are the <object_name> and use the user's currently selected database (via USE <database_name> command or as set in the connection string), along with the user's default schema as a prefixes, and that schema prefix is typically dbo (similar to public in PG) to resolve object names (which behind the scenes are always three-part names: <database_name>.<schema_name>.<object_name>). The default schema can be changed, similar to the PG search path being changed.. Two-part names are <schema_name>.<object_name> and again use the user's currently selected database to get the fully qualified three-part name. Where MSSQL differs from both MySQL and PG is in the support for three-part names. These are <database_name>.<schema_name>.<object_name>, and you can in fact run real "cross-database" MSSQL queries without FDW trickery. Historically, I believe there were some light limitations on their usage, such as in Foreign Keys and Triggers, but that may no longer be the case. Linked Servers are the MSSQL near equivalent of FDW and are used in four-part names: <linked server name>.<database_name>.<schema_name>.<object_name>. Two other MSSQL concepts are CONTAINED DATABASES and Azure SQL Database (with "Elastic Queries" as FDW, shockingly in "preview" for about a decade now). Those are beyond the scope of this email. PG On the PG side (which I know the least about), it does have real databases with schemas, and does support FDW. But since it uses a shared WAL (at least MSSQL separates logs per database, unclear on InnoDB, et. al.), and it uses a shared security system, I don't understand why it doesn't support cross-database queries. But that question would be best asked in a separate thread (any maybe it's already in the archives anyways). Putting all relevant objects in a single database with different schemas has already been mentioned as a workaround. As far as some of the other back and forth on database (and system) architecture, that's really an enormous (and specialty) topic. Having previously worked on one of the largest MSSQL installations in the world, I have not seen anything in PG that would prevent a proper scaling strategy as long as "DB as API" was not being attempted, but rather microservices or some other pattern was used, and frequent massive JOINs cross-instance or cross-server (actual servers) weren't being attempted. All three platforms discussed here will have performance problems with that. Perhaps the original poster would benefit from reviewing one of the gold standards on this topic, "Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems" https://www.amazon.com/dp/1449373321 Thanks, Kevin ________________________________ From: Ron Johnson <ronljohnso...@gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, March 6, 2025 10:16 AM To: pgsql-generallists.postgresql.org <pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org> Subject: Re: Quesion about querying distributed databases On Thu, Mar 6, 2025 at 10:47 AM Igor Korot <ikoro...@gmail.com<mailto:ikoro...@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi, On Thu, Mar 6, 2025, 7:32 AM Greg Sabino Mullane <htamf...@gmail.com<mailto:htamf...@gmail.com>> wrote: On Wed, Mar 5, 2025 at 9:44 PM me nefcanto <sn.1...@gmail.com<mailto:sn.1...@gmail.com>> wrote: Anyway, that's why I asked you guys. However, encouraging me to go back to monolith without giving solutions on how to scale, is not helping. We did. In addition to the ongoing FDW discussion, I mentioned read-only replicas and Citus. As far as *how* to scale vertically, we can offer general advice (more hardware resources, ramdisks for temp stuff, OS-level tuning, separate disk mounts). But a lot of it is tuning Postgres for your specific situation and your specific bottlenecks. Which we are happy to help with. Once we convince you to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. :) 8 Terabytes of data. A single backup took us more than 21 days Something was fundamentally wrong there. It could happen on an old and drained hardware... 😀 8TB databases existed 20+ years ago. Like always, the hardware must fit the application. 21 days to backup a database absolutely means many things were improperly sized and configured. -- Death to <Redacted>, and butter sauce. Don't boil me, I'm still alive. <Redacted> lobster!
