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In today's fast-paced business environment, startups need to leverage the power of the cloud to achieve scale, performance, and consistency for their apps. Google Cloud provides three popular cloud databases that enable reliable PostgreSQL: Spanner, AlloyDB and Cloud SQL. In this article, we will explore the features and benefits of these databases, focusing on AlloyDB and Spanner and how startups can use them — together or separately — to simplify infrastructure, reduce operational costs, and maximize performance. Spanner: a scalable and globally distributed database Spanner is a fully managed database for both relational and non-relational workloads that is designed to scale horizontally across multiple regions and continents. Combining strong consistency, high availability, and low latency, it stands as the ideal solution for mission-critical applications demanding high throughput and rapid response times. Spanner provides a PostgreSQL interface, ensuring your schemas and queries are portable to other environments within or outside of Google Cloud. This also allows developers to leverage many of the tools and techniques they already know, flattening the learning curve when transitioning to Spanner. One of the key features of Spanner is its ability to replicate data across multiple regions while maintaining strong, ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) transactions and a familiar SQL interface. On top of that, Spanner offers schema changes without downtime, fully automatic data replication, and data redundancy. As a result, developers can build applications that operate seamlessly across multiple regions without worrying about data consistency issues, regional failures, or planned maintenance. When is Spanner the right fit? Spanner also offers automatic horizontal scaling, from an inexpensive slice of one compute node to thousands of nodes (see in graph below), making it easy for a startup to increase or decrease their query and data capacity based on their workload demands. Spanner allows you to resize elastically without downtime or other disruption, so you can better align your usage with the workload. As a result, startups save money by paying only for the resources needed. In contrast to legacy scale-up databases, changing capacity typically involves 1) standing up new infrastructure, 2) migrating the schema and all of the data, and 3) a big-bang cutover in coordination with downstream applications. Spanner allows you to adjust capacity — read and write — on the fly with no downtime. A built-in managed autoscaler adjusts the capacity for you based on signals, such as CPU usage. Spanner scales linearly from tiny workloads—100 processing units, the equivalent of 0.1 node, and 400GB of data—to thousands of nodes, handling PB of data and millions of queries per second. Recent improvements have raised the storage capacity to 10TB per node and increased the throughput by 50%. For example, Niantic runs 5,000 node instances handling the traffic for Pokémon GO. This elasticity saves you money, reduces risks, and provides scale insurance. Even if you aren’t there today, rest assured you can grow to Niantic or Gmail-sized workloads without disruptive re-architecture with Spanner. Start small and scale with Spanner AlloyDB: A cloud-native and managed PostgreSQL database Google Cloud AlloyDB for PostgreSQL is a fully managed, PostgreSQL-compatible database service that's designed for your most demanding workloads, including 1) transactional, 2) analytical, and 3) hybrid transactional and analytical processing (HTAP). In Google’s performance tests, AlloyDB delivers up to 100X faster analytical queries than standard PostgreSQL and is more than 2X faster than Amazon’s comparable PostgreSQL-compatible service for transactional workloads. AlloyDB also offers a number of features designed to simplify application development. For example, it supports standard PostgreSQL syntax and extensions, making it easy to write queries and manipulate data. Another important consideration: AlloyDB may be the better choice if you’re planning to build GenAI apps, thanks to AlloyDB AI, a built-in set of capabilities for working with vectors, models, and data. AlloyDB uses columnar storage for its columnar engine, which is designed to accelerate analytical queries. The columnar engine stores frequently queried data in an in-memory, columnar format, which can significantly improve the performance of these queries. Intelligent, workload-aware dynamic data organization leverages both row-based and column-based formats. Multiple layers of cache ensure excellent price-performance. Choosing the right database for your startup When it comes to choosing the right database for your startup, there are several factors to consider. First and foremost, you need to consider your application's requirements in terms of performance, availability, global consistency, and scalability. Are you building a consumer app for millions of concurrent users? Maybe a corporate app that will be used for real-time analytics? Each database has its own strengths. Feature AlloyDB Spanner Type Cloud-native, managed PostgreSQL database Globally distributed scalable database Supported engines PostgreSQL PostgreSQL, GoogleSQL Security Data encryption at rest and in transit Data encryption at rest and in transit Data residency Single region by default, multi-region available Multi-region by default Best for Hybrid transactional & analytical workloads, AI applications Mission-critical apps with high data consistency & global reach (multi-writer across regions) Spanner is the ideal choice for mission-critical applications that demand high scalability, unwavering consistency, and 99.999% SLA availability. Teams building applications that are evaluating sharding or active-active configurations, to work around scaling limitations can benefit from Spanner’s built-in, hands-free operations. Spanner enables development teams with its familiar SQL interface (including PostgreSQL dialect support) for seamless large-scale data processing. This ensures portability, flexibility, and simplifies use cases requiring high write scaling, global consistency, and adaptability to variable traffic. AlloyDB is a good choice for applications that need a high-performance, reliable, and scalable database with built-in support for advanced analytics and full PostgreSQL compatibility. AlloyDB supports real-time analytics applications because of its automatic data placement across tiers (e.g., buffer cache, ultra-fast cache, and block storage), and its ability to process up to 64 TiB of data per cluster in real time. AlloyDB is also reliable and offers a 99.99% SLA, including maintenance. Another option to consider is Cloud SQL, an enterprise-ready, fully managed relational database service that offers PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server engines. It is user-friendly as it provides a straightforward user interface with the familiar SQL interface with PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server for easy interaction and only takes minutes to get your database up and running. Additionally, another important factor to keep in mind is your team's expertise and familiarity with different database technologies. If your team is already familiar with relational databases and the Google Cloud ecosystem, then Spanner may be the easier choice. If your team is more comfortable with PostgreSQL, then AlloyDB may be the better fit. Conclusion In conclusion, Spanner and AlloyDB are two powerful databases that offer different benefits and features for startups and can be used together or separately, depending on your needs. Together, AlloyDB and Spanner are a dynamic duo with which you can achieve performance and scalability based on Google’s innovations, delivering both responsive user interactions and robust, scalable back-end functionalities. With PostgreSQL and Google Cloud as the unifying threads, both services can co-exist seamlessly, forming a powerful combination for any application demanding high performance and unwavering reliability. For example, Character.ai uses AlloyDB and Spanner together in the same app that is at core of their business: AlloyDB for powering the interactive experience: At the user-facing front-end, AlloyDB shines as the engine behind quick, responsive interactions. Its unparalleled speed and performance ensure a smooth and intuitive user experience, critical for engaging with the AI model. Spanner as the backbone of history and workflow: Behind the scenes, Spanner maintains the complete history and workflow data integral to the AI integration. Its unshakeable scale and availability guarantee seamless data management, regardless of load or complexity. Both Spanner and AlloyDB operate within the familiar PostgreSQL ecosystem, offering a consistent and unified development experience. This empowers developers to leverage their existing skills and knowledge, accelerating integration and workflow. Additionally, the Google Cloud Platform provides a robust and secure environment for both services, ensuring seamless data management and operational efficiency. View the full article

Editor’s note: Apex FinTech Solutions Inc. ("Apex") enables modern investing and wealth management tools through an ecosystem of frictionless platforms, APIs, and services. As part of its clearing and custody services (provided through Apex Clearing Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Apex Fintech Solutions Inc.), Apex wanted to deliver its fintech clients in the trading and investment sector with more timely and accurate margin calculations. To transform this traditionally on-premises process, the company migrated to AlloyDB for PostgreSQL to enable real-time decision-making and risk management for clients and investors. We know that time is money — especially for investors. In the trading and investment sector, fintech companies are leading the charge as investors demand faster, more secure, and more intuitive experiences. Developing solutions for increasingly tech-savvy clients, however, can take a toll on computing resources. That’s why companies turn to us, Apex FinTech Solutions. Our modular ecosystem of APIs and platforms includes trading solutions that provide the routing for execution exchanges and market makers. To ensure top-notch speed and performance for our margin calculation workloads, we chose AlloyDB for PostgreSQL as our database. Overhauling processes to invest in our successRecently, Apex leadership has been focused on transforming on-premises processes into SaaS-based product offerings. We saw an opportunity for improvement in our margin calculation method — a crucial service for brokerages. Margin is the capital that an investor borrows from a broker to purchase an investment and represents the difference between the investment's value and the amount borrowed. Investors should continually monitor and understand margin requirements as they are required to maintain sufficient equity to hold open positions. The amount of required equity fluctuates based upon portfolio mix and optimization, price movements, and underlying market volatility. It is also important to understand that trading firms have a fixed amount of capital they can allocate to their specific margin obligations at any given time, which may affect the requirements and equity needed to maintain their open positions. In our previous system, we used a Java application with Microsoft SQL Server as its backend to calculate margins as a batch process that provided the start-of-day buying power numbers to our clients and investors. We ran the process in our data center via a database export file, which we chunked up and distributed across several worker nodes to calculate the margins in mini-batches. As part of Apex’s digital transformation and cloud migration, we needed real-time data from APIs to calculate the margin on demand and help our customers to determine their risk in seconds. We knew this capability would provide a strategic advantage for Apex and our customers. AlloyDB — a convincing solutionAlloyDB is a fully managed, PostgreSQL-compatible database solution that provides openness and scalability. As a highly regulated financial institution, total system availability and performance were critical considerations. We quickly adopted AlloyDB with confidence since it was compatible with our high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) requirements right out of the box. Today, a combination of a new microservices architecture and AlloyDB allows us to query directly against the real-time account data stored in the database. The functionality we use includes AlloyDB read replicas, the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster autoscaler, a Pub/Sub event bus, and the AlloyDB columnar engine. The most crucial part of the architecture is its ability to separate write and read operations between the AlloyDB primary instance and AlloyDB read replicas. This capability provides the flexibility to segregate transactional and analytical queries, improving performance and scalability. Since AlloyDB uses a disaggregated, shared storage system to store data, we can spin up read replicas on demand without waiting for data to be copied over from the primary instance. When the workload is complete, we can scale down replicas to minimize costs. Moreover, we enabled the AlloyDB columnar engine since margin calculations are an analytical query from the database’s point of view. The columnar engine reduced the total CPU load on the database, saving costs by minimizing the required number of read replicas. A GKE cluster configured for autoscaling based on the number of messages in a Pub/Sub queue allows resources to scale up dynamically — so we can quickly process the entire workload more efficiently and in parallel — and then spin back down once processing is complete. Figure 1: Architecture diagram of modern margin calculation in Google Cloud Crunching the numbers: 50% reduction in processing timeThis new, flexible architecture offers Apex customers the choice between on-demand single account margin calculations via an Apigee API or comprehensive nightly batch jobs for all accounts. This in turn gives us an opportunity to expand our existing service offerings and increase customer value. The AlloyDB-based solution achieved a remarkable 50 percent reduction in processing time, enabling margin calculations for 100,000 accounts in just one minute.1 This is a significant improvement in efficiency and scalability. With the flexibility and speed of AlloyDB, we have significant potential to improve these results with further tuning. We are excited to collaborate with Google Cloud to use AlloyDB in our scalable architecture for batch and real-time margin calculation without the need to move or copy data. We are now exploring the potential to migrate additional traditional PostgreSQL instances and continue driving disruption and innovation for Apex — and the future of financial services. Get startedLearn more about AlloyDB for PostgreSQL and start a free trial today!1. 50% reduction in processing time is based on internal testing and benchmarking conducted in November 2024 using the Google database and services. All product and company names are trademarks ™ or registered ® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them. Apex Fintech Solutions is a fintech powerhouse enabling seamless access, frictionless investing, and investor education for all. Apex’s omni-suite of scalable solutions fuel innovation and evolution for hundreds of today’s market leaders, challengers, change makers, and visionaries. The Company’s digital ecosystem creates an environment where clients with the biggest ideas are empowered to change the world. Apex works to ensure their partners succeed on the frontlines of the industry via bespoke solutions through its Apex Clearing™, Apex Advisor Solutions™, Apex Silver™, and Apex CODA Markets™ brands. Apex Clearing Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apex Fintech Solutions Inc., is an SEC registered broker dealer, a member of FINRA and SIPC, and is licensed in 53 states and territories. Securities products and services referenced herein are provided by Apex Clearing Corporation. FINRA BrokerCheck reports for Apex Clearing Corporation are available at: http://www.finra.org/brokercheck Nothing herein shall be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. While we have made every attempt to ensure that the information contained in this document has been obtained from reliable sources, Apex is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. All information in this document is provided “as is”, with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained due to the use of this information, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of performance, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will Apex be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or taken in reliance on the information in this document or for any consequential, special or similar damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Dissemination of this information is prohibited without Apex’s written permission. View the full article

Recently, at Google I/O, we announced AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, a fully-managed, PostgreSQL-compatible database for demanding, enterprise-grade transactional and analytical workloads. Imagine PostgreSQL plus the best of the cloud: elastic storage and compute, intelligent caching, and AI/ML-powered management. Further, AlloyDB delivers unmatched price-performance: In our performance tests, it’s more than 4x faster on transactional workloads, and up to 100x faster on analytical queries than standard PostgreSQL, all with simple, predictable pricing. Designed for mission-critical applications, AlloyDB offers extensive data protection and an industry leading 99.99% availability SLA, inclusive of maintenance. Read Article

Enterprises are struggling to free themselves from legacy database systems, and need an alternative option to modernize their applications. Today at Google I/O, we’re thrilled to announce the preview of AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, a fully-managed, PostgreSQL-compatible database service that provides a powerful option for modernizing your most demanding enterprise database workloads. Compared with standard PostgreSQL, in our performance tests, AlloyDB was more than four times faster for transactional workloads, and up to 100 times faster for analytical queries. AlloyDB was also two times faster for transactional workloads than Amazon’s comparable service. This makes AlloyDB a powerful new modernization option for transitioning off of legacy databases. Read Article