OrioleDB

Next-generation OLTP engine for PostgreSQL

OrioleDB is a PostgreSQL storage engine extension that claims to provide 4x OLTP performance, no xid wraparound and table bloat issues, and “cloud-native” (data stored in S3) capabilities.

Pigsty ships OrioleDB as a patched PostgreSQL kernel plus the OrioleDB extension.

You can run OrioleDB as an RDS using Pigsty. Current packages support PostgreSQL 16, 17, and 18 on supported Linux platforms. The current Pigsty package line is OrioleDB 1.8 beta16.

Quick Start

Follow Pigsty’s standard installation process using the oriole configuration template.

curl -fsSL https://repo.pigsty.io/get | bash; cd ~/pigsty;
./configure -c oriole    # Use OrioleDB configuration template
./deploy.yml             # Install Pigsty with OrioleDB

For production deployment, ensure you modify the password parameters in the pigsty.yml configuration before running the install playbook.

Configuration

pg-meta:
  hosts:
    10.10.10.10: { pg_seq: 1, pg_role: primary }
  vars:
    pg_cluster: pg-meta
    pg_users:
      - {name: dbuser_meta ,password: DBUser.Meta   ,pgbouncer: true ,roles: [dbrole_admin]    ,comment: pigsty admin user }
      - {name: dbuser_view ,password: DBUser.Viewer ,pgbouncer: true ,roles: [dbrole_readonly] ,comment: read-only viewer for meta database }
    pg_databases:
      - {name: meta ,baseline: cmdb.sql ,comment: pigsty meta database ,schemas: [pigsty], extensions: [orioledb]}
    pg_hba_rules:
      - {user: dbuser_view , db: all ,addr: infra ,auth: pwd ,title: 'allow grafana dashboard access cmdb from infra nodes'}
    node_crontab: [ '00 01 * * * postgres /pg/bin/pg-backup full' ] # Full backup at 1 AM daily

    # OrioleDB specific settings
    pg_mode: oriole                                         # oriole compatibility mode
    pg_version: 18                                          # OrioleDB supports PG 16, 17, and 18
    pg_packages: [ oriole, pgsql-common ]                   # Install OrioleDB kernel
    pg_libs: 'orioledb, pg_stat_statements, auto_explain'   # Load OrioleDB extension

Usage

To use OrioleDB, install the packages for the selected PostgreSQL major version. RPM packages use oriolepg_$v and orioledb_$v; DEB packages use oriolepg-$v and oriolepg-$v-orioledb, where $v can be 16, 17, or 18.

Initialize TPC-B-like tables with pgbench using 100 warehouses:

pgbench -is 100 meta
pgbench -nv -P1 -c10 -S -T1000 meta
pgbench -nv -P1 -c50 -S -T1000 meta
pgbench -nv -P1 -c10    -T1000 meta
pgbench -nv -P1 -c50    -T1000 meta

Next, you can rebuild these tables using the orioledb storage engine and observe the performance difference:

-- Create OrioleDB tables
CREATE TABLE pgbench_accounts_o (LIKE pgbench_accounts INCLUDING ALL) USING orioledb;
CREATE TABLE pgbench_branches_o (LIKE pgbench_branches INCLUDING ALL) USING orioledb;
CREATE TABLE pgbench_history_o (LIKE pgbench_history INCLUDING ALL) USING orioledb;
CREATE TABLE pgbench_tellers_o (LIKE pgbench_tellers INCLUDING ALL) USING orioledb;

-- Copy data from regular tables to OrioleDB tables
INSERT INTO pgbench_accounts_o SELECT * FROM pgbench_accounts;
INSERT INTO pgbench_branches_o SELECT * FROM pgbench_branches;
INSERT INTO pgbench_history_o SELECT  * FROM pgbench_history;
INSERT INTO pgbench_tellers_o SELECT * FROM pgbench_tellers;

-- Drop original tables and rename OrioleDB tables
DROP TABLE pgbench_accounts, pgbench_branches, pgbench_history, pgbench_tellers;
ALTER TABLE pgbench_accounts_o RENAME TO pgbench_accounts;
ALTER TABLE pgbench_branches_o RENAME TO pgbench_branches;
ALTER TABLE pgbench_history_o RENAME TO pgbench_history;
ALTER TABLE pgbench_tellers_o RENAME TO pgbench_tellers;

Key Features

  • No XID Wraparound: Eliminates transaction ID wraparound maintenance
  • No Table Bloat: Advanced storage management prevents table bloat
  • Cloud Storage: Native support for S3-compatible object storage
  • OLTP Optimized: Designed for transactional workloads
  • Improved Performance: Better space utilization and query performance

Note: Currently in Beta stage - thoroughly evaluate before production use.


Last Modified 2026-07-01: docs: update OrioleDB PG version support (9aa3d43)