The integration of Rust into PostgreSQL through PL/Rust has sparked significant discussion within the database community, highlighting both opportunities and concerns surrounding this innovative extension. While now available on Amazon RDS, the implementation has received mixed feedback from database administrators and developers.
Security and Trust Considerations
A major point of discussion centers around PL/Rust's security model and its trusted designation. The extension implements specific safeguards against unsafe Rust code, including custom lints and a specialized fork of Rust's standard library called postgrestd. However, community members have raised valid concerns about potential vulnerabilities through third-party crates and known Rust compiler soundness issues.
Key Implementation Features:
- Custom rustc driver with specialized lints
- postgrestd: Specialized Rust compilation target
- Blocks unsafe code in user functions
- Available on Amazon RDS
- Currently supports trusted and untrusted versions
- Limited to Linux x86_64/aarch64 for trusted version
Performance vs. Traditional Solutions
Database performance implications have emerged as a key talking point among professionals. While stored procedures are generally type-safe and JIT compiled, some community members note varying performance characteristics across different procedural languages:
Engineering is tradeoffs, the limiting factor in most databases is I/O; if you can shift your I/O around to do less of it with a stored procedure then you should probably do it, and having a breakout from SQL on the database itself can achieve that.
Implementation Challenges
Despite its availability on Amazon RDS, developers report significant difficulties with local development environments. The dockerization process and local setup have been described as particularly challenging, with some users calling for improved documentation and setup guides. This implementation friction could potentially impact adoption rates among development teams.
Project Maintenance Concerns
The community has expressed worries about the project's development pace. Notable concerns include the delayed PostgreSQL 17 support, which was anticipated in July but remains unreleased. This has led to some hesitation among potential adopters who require assurance of long-term maintenance and support.
Database Administrator Perspective
DBAs have traditionally been cautious about procedural language extensions, primarily due to resource management concerns. While extensions like Foreign Data Tables have proven valuable in production environments, the introduction of new language handlers requires careful consideration of system resources and performance implications.
The future of PL/Rust appears to hinge on addressing these various concerns while maintaining its promise of bringing Rust's safety and performance benefits to PostgreSQL environments. As the project matures, clearer documentation and continued security improvements will be crucial for wider adoption.
Reference: PL/Rust: A Trusted Procedural Language Handler for Rust