Building an Integrated Vector Database System in PostgreSQL

Researchers posted a paper on arXiv on 17 Aug 2026 describing PostgreSQL-V 2.0, an integrated vector database system inside PostgreSQL that closes three limitations of their earlier PostgreSQL-V 1.0. PostgreSQL-V 2.0 delivers up to 36.4x the throughput of PostgreSQL-V 1.0 while serving 32 concurrent clients, keeps crash recovery near 20 ms independent of total index size, and extends physical replication to the decoupled vector index. The work addresses the performance gap between PostgreSQL-based vector search systems such as pgvector and specialized vector databases.

Computer Science Databases Submitted on 17 Aug 2026 Title:Building An Integrated Vector Database System in PostgreSQL View PDF https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.15994 HTML experimental https://arxiv.org/html/2608.15994v1 Abstract:This paper presents PostgreSQL-V 2.0, a scalable integrated vector database system inside PostgreSQL. Existing PostgreSQL-based vector search systems such as pgvector embed vector indexes into PostgreSQL's page-oriented storage engine, incurring significant overhead that leads to a huge performance gap with specialized vector databases. In our earlier work, we introduced PostgreSQL-V 1.0, which addresses this issue by separating vector index structures from PostgreSQL's storage engine, enabling vector search performance close to that of native vector index libraries while preserving SQL compatibility. However, we find that PostgreSQL-V 1.0 has three limitations that matter for real-world workloads: it only supports a single connection without concurrency , recovery time grows with index size, and physical replication is unsupported. We further present PostgreSQL-V 2.0, which closes all three gaps. PostgreSQL-V 2.0's concurrency support enables fully concurrent vector searches and updates across PostgreSQL's multi-process backends, delivering up to 36.4x the throughput of PostgreSQL-V 1.0 while serving 32 concurrent clients. PostgreSQL-V 2.0's fast crash recovery keeps cost independent of total index size, remaining near 20 ms while PostgreSQL-V 1.0's grows into seconds-scale. PostgreSQL-V 2.0's physical replication support extends physical replication to the decoupled index, preserving index consistency on standbys without burdening the primary node. Together, these advances make PostgreSQL-V 2.0 a fully concurrent, crash-resilient, and replication-ready vector database inside PostgreSQL. References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer What is the Explorer? https://info.arxiv.org/labs/showcase.html arxiv-bibliographic-explorer Connected Papers What is Connected Papers? https://www.connectedpapers.com/about Litmaps What is Litmaps? https://www.litmaps.co/ scite Smart Citations What are Smart Citations? https://www.scite.ai/ Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv What is alphaXiv? https://alphaxiv.org/ CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers What is CatalyzeX? https://www.catalyzex.com DagsHub What is DagsHub? https://dagshub.com/ Gotit.pub What is GotitPub? http://gotit.pub/faq Hugging Face What is Huggingface? https://huggingface.co/huggingface ScienceCast What is ScienceCast? https://sciencecast.org/welcome Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower What are Influence Flowers? https://influencemap.cmlab.dev/ CORE Recommender What is CORE? https://core.ac.uk/services/recommender arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs https://info.arxiv.org/labs/index.html .