What is alisql?

AliSQL is a modified version of MySQL, the widely used open-source database, built and maintained by Alibaba. It is based on MySQL 8.0 and is fully compatible with standard MySQL tools, drivers, and SQL syntax, meaning you can use it as a drop-in replacement without changing how you write queries or connect your applications. The main additions over standard MySQL are two: a built-in analytics engine powered by DuckDB, and native support for vector search. The DuckDB engine uses a columnar storage format that is designed for running complex analytical queries across large datasets, which is a different kind of workload than typical transactional queries that read and write individual rows. The README claims around 200 times faster performance on analytical queries compared to the standard InnoDB storage engine. You pick the engine per table when you create it, so transactional tables and analytical tables can coexist in the same database. The vector search feature lets you store high-dimensional numerical arrays alongside regular data and then search for the closest matches by mathematical distance. This is the kind of operation used in AI applications when you want to find content that is semantically similar to a query, rather than finding exact keyword matches. AliSQL supports vectors with up to 16,383 dimensions and includes an indexing method called HNSW for fast approximate nearest-neighbor lookups. AliSQL was open-sourced by the Alibaba Cloud Database Team in December 2025. Building it from source requires CMake, Python 3, and either GCC or Clang. Planned future additions include faster schema changes, quicker crash recovery, and replication improvements. Full documentation and setup guides are included in the repository's wiki directory.