AliSQL
Alibaba's Enterprise MySQL Branch with DuckDB OLAP & Native Vector Search
Battle-tested in Alibaba's production environment, powering millions of databases
Features •
Quick Start •
Docs •
Roadmap •
Contributing
简体中文 | English
## Why AliSQL?
AliSQL brings enterprise-grade capabilities to MySQL, combining the reliability of InnoDB OLTP with DuckDB's blazing-fast analytics and native vector search — all through familiar MySQL interfaces.
|
### 200x Faster Analytics
DuckDB columnar engine delivers **200x speedup** on analytical queries compared to InnoDB
|
### Native Vector Search
Built-in HNSW algorithm supporting up to **16,383 dimensions** for AI/ML workloads
|
### 100% MySQL Compatible
Use your existing MySQL tools, drivers, and SQL — zero learning curve
|
## Key Features
| Feature | Description | Status |
|---------|-------------|--------|
| **DuckDB Storage Engine** | Columnar OLAP engine with automatic compression, perfect for analytics workloads | Available |
| **Vector Index (VIDX)** | Native vector storage & ANN search with HNSW, supports COSINE & EUCLIDEAN distance | Available |
| **DDL Optimization** | Instant DDL, parallel B+tree construction, non-blocking locks | Planned |
| **RTO Optimization** | Accelerated crash recovery for faster instance startup | Planned |
| **Replication Boost** | Binlog Parallel Flush, Binlog in Redo, large transaction optimization | Planned |
## Quick Start
### Option 1: Build from Source
```bash
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL.git
cd AliSQL
# Build (release mode)
sh build.sh -t release -d ~/alisql
# Install
make install
```
### Option 2: Set Up a DuckDB Analytical Node
> **Step-by-step guide:** [How to set up a DuckDB node](./wiki/duckdb/how-to-setup-duckdb-node-en.md)
### Initialize & Start Server
```bash
# Initialize data directory
~/alisql/bin/mysqld --initialize-insecure --datadir=~/alisql/data
# Start the server
~/alisql/bin/mysqld --datadir=~/alisql/data
```
## Usage Examples
### DuckDB for Analytics
```sql
-- Create an analytical table with DuckDB engine
CREATE TABLE sales_analytics (
sale_date DATE,
product_id INT,
revenue DECIMAL(10,2),
quantity INT
) ENGINE=DuckDB;
-- Run complex analytics (200x faster than InnoDB!)
SELECT
DATE_FORMAT(sale_date, '%Y-%m') as month,
SUM(revenue) as total_revenue,
COUNT(*) as transactions
FROM sales_analytics
GROUP BY month
ORDER BY total_revenue DESC;
```
### Vector Search for AI Applications
```sql
-- Create a table with vector column
CREATE TABLE embeddings (
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
content TEXT,
embedding VECTOR(768) -- 768-dimensional vectors
) ENGINE=InnoDB;
-- Create HNSW index for fast ANN search
CREATE VECTOR INDEX idx_embedding ON embeddings(embedding);
-- Find similar items using cosine distance
SELECT id, content,
COSINE_DISTANCE(embedding, '[0.1, 0.2, ...]') as distance
FROM embeddings
ORDER BY distance
LIMIT 10;
```
## Build Options
| Option | Description | Default |
|--------|-------------|---------|
| `-t release\|debug` | Build type | `debug` |
| `-d ` | Installation directory | `/usr/local/alisql` |
| `-g asan\|tsan` | Enable sanitizer (memory/thread) | disabled |
| `-c` | Enable code coverage (gcov) | disabled |
**Prerequisites:** CMake 3.x+, Python 3, GCC 7+ or Clang 5+
## Roadmap
```
Q4 2025 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[x] DuckDB Storage Engine [x] Vector Index (VIDX) [x] Open Source
2026 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] DDL Optimization [ ] RTO Optimization [ ] Replication Boost
- Instant DDL - Fast Crash Recovery - Binlog Parallel Flush
- Parallel B+tree - Minimize RTO - Binlog in Redo
- Non-blocking Locks - Large TX Optimization
```
## Documentation
| Document | Description |
|----------|-------------|
| [DuckDB Integration Guide](./wiki/duckdb/duckdb-en.md) | Complete guide for DuckDB storage engine |
| [Vector Index Guide](./wiki/vidx/vidx_readme.md) | Native vector storage and ANN search |
| [Release Notes](./wiki/changes-in-alisql-8.0.44.md) | What's new in AliSQL 8.0.44 |
| [Setup DuckDB Node](./wiki/duckdb/how-to-setup-duckdb-node-en.md) | Quick setup guide for analytics |
**External Resources:**
- [MySQL 8.0 Documentation](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/)
- [DuckDB Official Docs](https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/)
- [Detailed Article (Chinese)](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_YmlV3vPc9CksumXvXWBEw)
## Contributing
AliSQL became open source in December 2025 and is actively maintained by Alibaba Cloud Database Team.
We welcome contributions of all kinds!
1. **Fork** the repository
2. **Create** a feature branch (`git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature`)
3. **Commit** your changes (`git commit -m 'Add amazing feature'`)
4. **Push** to the branch (`git push origin feature/amazing-feature`)
5. **Open** a Pull Request
For bugs and feature requests, please use [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL/issues).
## Related Tools
### RDSAI CLI — AI-Powered Database Assistant
[RDSAI CLI](https://github.com/aliyun/rdsai-cli) is a next-generation, AI-powered CLI that transforms how you interact with AliSQL and MySQL databases. Describe your intent in **natural language**, and the AI agent handles the rest.
```bash
# Install
curl -LsSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aliyun/rdsai-cli/main/install.sh | sh
# Connect and ask in natural language
rdsai --host localhost -u root -p secret -D mydb
mysql> analyze index usage on users table
mysql> show me slow queries from the last hour
mysql> why this query is slow: SELECT * FROM users WHERE name LIKE '%john%'
```
**Key Features:**
- Natural language to SQL conversion (English/中文)
- AI-powered query optimization and diagnostics
- Execution plan analysis with `Ctrl+E`
- Multi-model LLM support (Qwen, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Anthropic, etc.)
- Performance benchmarking with automated analysis
👉 **[Get Started with RDSAI CLI](https://github.com/aliyun/rdsai-cli)**
## Community & Support
|
**GitHub Issues**
For bug reports & feature requests
[Open an Issue](https://github.com/alibaba/AliSQL/issues)
|
**Alibaba Cloud RDS**
Managed DuckDB analytical instances
[Learn More](https://help.aliyun.com/zh/rds/apsaradb-rds-for-mysql/duckdb-based-analytical-instance/)
|
## License
AliSQL is licensed under **GPL-2.0**, the same license as MySQL.
See the [LICENSE](LICENSE) file for details.
## Star History
Made with care by Alibaba Cloud Database Team
GitHub •
MySQL •
DuckDB