Microsoft Developer shares Dingding Liu’s overview of Azure HorizonDB, a new Azure-managed PostgreSQL service aimed at extreme scale and performance, including architecture highlights, a quick VS Code provisioning demo, and AI-oriented capabilities like vector indexing and SQL-based AI functions.

PostgreSQL Like a Pro: Azure HorizonDB overview

Dingding Liu shares a sneak peek at Azure HorizonDB, described as Microsoft’s newest managed PostgreSQL service built for extreme scale and performance.

What Azure HorizonDB is positioned to do

• Target mission-critical PostgreSQL workloads at large scale.
• Emphasize performance and resilience features such as:
  • Decoupled compute and storage
  • Sub-millisecond multi-zone commits
  • Scaling patterns involving replicas over shared storage

AI-oriented capabilities mentioned

Azure HorizonDB is also presented as supporting AI-native workloads, including:

• Built-in vector indexing (for vector search / AI retrieval scenarios)
• SQL-based AI functions
• Integration with Microsoft Foundry (likely referring to Azure AI Foundry)

Demo and workflow highlights (as described)

• Creating/adding a new HorizonDB cluster in VS Code
• Query conversion (shown as part of the demo flow)
• Discussion of performance at scale
• Extending the system by scaling out replicas over shared storage

Video timeline

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:31 Microsoft’s investment in PostgreSQL
• 0:47 What is Azure HorizonDB
• 1:19 Demo: Adding a new HorizonDB cluster in VS Code
• 1:50 Integration with Microsoft Foundry
• 2:05 Query conversion
• 2:59 Performance at scale
• 4:44 Extending to scaling out replica over shared storage
• 5:33 Wrap Up

Links

• Watch the series: https://www.aka.ms/PostgreLikeAPro
• Check out Azure HorizonDB: https://aka.ms/AzureHorizonDB