The most interesting part of this is the improvements to transaction handling that it seems they've made in https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL/blob/master/wiki/duckdb/du... (its also a good high level breakdown of MySQL internals too). Ensuring that the sync between the primary tables and the analytical ones are fast and most importantly, transactional, is awesome to see.
BTW, Would be great to hear apavlo’s opinion on this.
at the moment I use PG + Tiger Data - couldn't find a mysql equivalent
so this as one.
This isn't new either, people have been building OLAP storage engines into MySQL/Postgres for years, e.g., pg_ducklake and timescale.
For about a year releases include a vector storage type, so it will be interesting to see it compared in performance with what Alibaba did.
Just wanted to plug that out. Given how often Postgres is plugged on HN, I think people ignore how versatile mariadb is.
All I want is effectively what clickhouse does in PG. I have a single table that I need fast counts on and clickhouse can do the counts fast but I have to go through the entire sync/replication to do that.
A quick scan of TimeSeries always seemed like it was really only best setup for that and to use it another way would be a bit of a struggle.
The real version control history might be full of useless internal Jira ticket references, confidential information about products, in Mandarin, not even in git... there's a thousand reasons to surface only a minimal fake git version history, hand-crafted from major releases.
I might make the argument that paying the tax of delivering what you're arguing for has so many significant downsides in the end you'd have something you wouldn't really want anyway
but Tiger Data is more optimized for TimeSeries data - https://www.tigerdata.com/docs/use-timescale/latest/hypercor...
I do wish too there was an embedded click house like db in Postgres
AliSQL is Alibaba's MySQL branch, forked from official MySQL and used extensively in Alibaba Group's production environment. It includes various performance optimizations, stability improvements, and features tailored for large-scale applications.
Quickly build your DuckDB node: How to set up a DuckDB node
DuckDB Storage Engine:AliSQL integrates DuckDB as a native storage engine, allowing users to operate DuckDB with the same experience as MySQL. By leveraging AliSQL for rapid deployment of DuckDB service nodes, users can easily achieve lightweight analytical capabilities.
Vector Storage:AliSQL natively supports enterprise-grade vector processing for up to 16,383 dimensions. By integrating a highly optimized HNSW algorithm for high-performance Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) search, AliSQL empowers users to build AI-driven applications—such as semantic search and recommendation systems—seamlessly using standard SQL interfaces.
DDL Optimization (planned):AliSQL delivers a faster, safer, and lighter DDL experience through innovations such as enhanced Instant DDL, parallel B+tree construction, a non-blocking lock mechanism, and real-time DDL apply—significantly improving schema change efficiency and virtually eliminating replication lag.
RTO Optimization (planned):AliSQL deeply optimizes the end-to-end crash recovery path to accelerate instance startup, shorten RTO, and restore service quickly.
Replication Optimization (planned): AliSQL significantly boosts replication throughput and minimizes lag by implementing Binlog Parallel Flush, Binlog in Redo, and specialized optimizations for large transactions and DDL operations.
Prerequisites:
Build Instructions:
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL.git
cd AliSQL
# Build the project (release build)
sh build.sh -t release -d /path/to/install/dir
# For development/debugging (debug build)
sh build.sh -t debug -d /path/to/install/dir
# Install the built MySQL server
make install
Build Options:
-t release|debug: Build type (default: debug)-d <dest_dir>: Installation directory (default: /usr/local/alisql or $HOME/alisql)-s <server_suffix>: Server suffix (default: alisql-dev)-g asan|tsan: Enable sanitizer-c: Enable GCC coverage (gcov)-h, --help: Show helpFor DuckDB-specific support, see the DuckDB Support Options.
AliSQL 8.0 became an open-source project in December 2025 and is actively maintained by engineers at Alibaba Group.
Contributions are welcome! Please:
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This project is licensed under the GPL-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.
AliSQL is based on MySQL, which is licensed under GPL-2.0. The DuckDB integration follows the same licensing terms.