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ClickhouseExplainer
AI needs the best-of-breed data stack: Postgres and ClickHouse
Summary
AI-native applications generate large volumes of operational data, while agents and users increasingly require real-time answers from that data. This pressure raises both query concurrency and reliability requirements, with a cited sample of companies using Postgres and ClickHouse showing more than 1,000% data growth in six months and over 85 TB added. The proposed stack assigns Postgres low-latency transactional workloads and ClickHouse real-time analytics, connecting them through PeerDB and ClickPipes CDC with single-digit-second replication, pg_clickhouse query pushdown, and pg_stat_ch telemetry streaming. The conclusion is that AI makes the OLTP/OLAP distinction more important, favoring an open best-of-breed stack over a single platform while preserving each database's specialized role.
Context
AI applications generate rapidly growing volumes of data and require real-time analytical answers alongside transactional operations. The post states that hourly or minutely ETL is insufficient when only seconds should separate a write from its analytical availability, and that production AI systems also raise reliability and security requirements.
Approach / What changed
Use Postgres for transactional workloads and ClickHouse for analytics, integrating them with PeerDB and ClickPipes for CDC replication, pg_clickhouse for querying ClickHouse from Postgres, and pg_stat_ch for streaming query telemetry into ClickHouse. The post also presents managed Postgres in ClickHouse with built-in high availability, PITR, read replicas, forks, encryption, and native integration.
Takeaways
A cited sample of AI-native companies using Postgres and ClickHouse added more than 85 TB of data and grew its data volume by over 1,000% in six months.
PeerDB and ClickPipes provide CDC replication with single-digit-second latency, along with parallel snapshotting, schema evolution, monitoring, and resilient replication.
pg_stat_ch stores Postgres query telemetry in ClickHouse, supporting months of retention and high-cardinality analysis without impacting OLTP performance.
Source and freshness
- Source
- clickhouse.com
- Published
- Added to Yomu
- Last updated
Summaries are generated from the original by a language model. Check the original before relying on it.
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