Sharding Postgres without extensions with PgDog founder, Lev Kokotov

I chat with Lev Kokotov to talk about building PgDog, an open-source sharding solution for Postgres that sits outside the database. Lev shares the journey from creating PgCat to launching PgDog through YC, the technical challenges of sharding, and why he believes scaling Postgres shouldn’t require extensions or rewrites.

Follow Lev:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/levpgdog
• PgDog: https://pgdog.dev

Follow Aaron:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
• Website: https://aaronfrancis.com — find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.
• Database School: https://databaseschool.com

Chapters

• 00:00 - Intro
• 01:27 - Lev’s self-taught to computer science degree journey
• 04:50 - Transition to Postgres discussion
• 05:24 - History of PgCat
• 07:06 - What PG Cat does and key features
• 08:59 - Why Lev built PgCat instead of extending PG Bouncer
• 10:06 - PG Cat’s current status and usage
• 12:20 - Moving from PgCat to PgDog
• 13:09 - Applying to YC as a solo founder
• 16:24 - YC pitch: the market gap for Postgres sharding
• 18:52 - High-level overview of PgDog
• 23:32 - Why PgDog is not an extension
• 25:57 - When to build Postgres extensions vs standalone tools
• 27:49 - PgDog architecture and query parsing
• 30:39 - Handling cross-shard queries and current capabilities
• 33:47 - How PgDog shards an existing large Postgres database
• 36:37 - Parallel replication streams for faster sharding
• 39:07 - Alternate resharding approaches
• 42:52 - Where PgDog draws the orchestration line
• 44:00 - Vision for PgDog Cloud vs bring-your-own-database
• 46:47 - Company status: first hire, design partners, and production use
• 50:45 - How deploys work for customers
• 52:20 - Importance of building closely with design partners
• 54:05 - Paid design partnerships and initial deployments
• 56:23 - Benefit of sitting outside Postgres for compatibility
• 58:32 - Near-term roadmap and long-term vision
• 1:01:03 - Where to find Lev online