PostgreSQL extensions

Citus provides distributed functionality by extending PostgreSQL using the hook and extension APIs. This allows users to benefit from the features that come with the rich PostgreSQL ecosystem. These features include, but aren’t limited to, support for a wide range of data types (including semi-structured data types like jsonb and hstore), operators and functions, full text search, and other extensions such as PostGIS and HyperLogLog. Further, proper use of the extension APIs enable compatibility with standard PostgreSQL tools such as pgAdmin, pg_backup, and pg_upgrade.

As Citus is an extension which can be installed on any PostgreSQL instance, you can directly use other extensions such as hstore, hll, or PostGIS with Citus. However, there are two things to keep in mind. First, while including other extensions in shared_preload_libraries, you should make sure that Citus is the first extension. Secondly, you should create the extension on both the coordinator and the workers before starting to use it.

Note

Sometimes, there might be a few features of the extension that may not be supported out of the box. For example, a few aggregates in an extension may need to be modified a bit to be parallelized across multiple nodes. Please contact us if some feature from your favourite extension does not work as expected with Citus.