Christophe Pettus: A Correction: Snowflake Postgres Is Just Postgres
The article addresses a correction regarding Snowflake's Postgres offering. It clarifies that Snowflake Postgres is based on community Postgres without a proprietary storage layer. The author acknowledges the mistake of grouping Snowflake with other vendors that utilize modified versions of Postgres.
- ▪Snowflake Postgres is community Postgres and does not have a proprietary storage layer.
- ▪The acquisition of Crunchy Data did not result in a fork of Postgres for Snowflake.
- ▪The author admits to inaccurately grouping Snowflake with vendors like Databricks and Microsoft.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
2026-05-24 2 min PostgreSQL A Correction: Snowflake Postgres Is Just Postgres In Wednesday’s post on table access methods, I grouped Snowflake with Databricks and Microsoft as vendors with “bespoke storage layers underneath their Postgres-shaped products.” Elizabeth Christensen wrote in to point out that this is wrong about Snowflake, and she is right. Snowflake Postgres is community Postgres. The storage, the heap, the table access method machinery, all of it is upstream. The acquisition of Crunchy Data did not result in a fork or a substituted storage layer underneath; what Snowflake ships as Postgres is what the community ships, plus operational tooling and a managed-service wrapper around it. There is no proprietary storage moat there to speak of.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Postgr.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Postgr
