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

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