AliSQL
AliSQL is a MySQL branch originated from Alibaba Group. Fetch document from Release Notes at bottom.
Install / Use
/learn @alibaba/AliSQLREADME
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.
<table> <tr> <td width="33%" align="center">200x Faster Analytics
DuckDB columnar engine delivers 200x speedup on analytical queries compared to InnoDB
</td> <td width="33%" align="center">Native Vector Search
Built-in HNSW algorithm supporting up to 16,383 dimensions for AI/ML workloads
</td> <td width="33%" align="center">100% MySQL Compatible
Use your existing MySQL tools, drivers, and SQL — zero learning curve
</td> </tr> </table>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
# 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
Initialize & Start Server
# 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
-- 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
-- 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 <dir> | 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 | Complete guide for DuckDB storage engine | | Vector Index Guide | Native vector storage and ANN search | | Release Notes | What's new in AliSQL 8.0.44 | | Setup DuckDB Node | Quick setup guide for analytics |
External Resources:
Contributing
AliSQL became open source in December 2025 and is actively maintained by Alibaba Cloud Database Team.
We welcome contributions of all kinds!
- Fork the repository
- Create a feature branch (
git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature) - Commit your changes (
git commit -m 'Add amazing feature') - Push to the branch (
git push origin feature/amazing-feature) - Open a Pull Request
For bugs and feature requests, please use GitHub Issues.
Related Tools
RDSAI CLI — AI-Powered Database Assistant
<p> <a href="https://github.com/aliyun/rdsai-cli"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/GitHub-rdsai--cli-blue?style=flat-square&logo=github" alt="RDSAI CLI"></a> <a href="https://www.python.org/downloads/"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/python-3.13+-blue.svg?style=flat-square" alt="Python 3.13+"></a> </p>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.
# 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
Community & Support
<table> <tr> <td align="center" width="50%">GitHub Issues
For bug reports & feature requests
</td> <td align="center" width="50%">Alibaba Cloud RDS
Managed DuckDB analytical instances
</td> </tr> </table>License
AliSQL is licensed under GPL-2.0, the same license as MySQL.
See the LICENSE file for details.
