pgEdge Posts from Phillip Merrick https://www.pgedge.com/blog The latest pgEdge Posts from Phillip Merrick en-us pgEdge,PostgreSQL,PostgreSQL,Agentic AI <![CDATA[Building AI Agents on Postgres: Why We Built the pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/building-ai-agents-on-postgres-why-we-built-the-pgedge-agentic-ai-toolkit Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:57:01 GMT We are delighted today to be announcing the beta release of our pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit for Postgres.  We’ve had the benefit of collaborating on real-world Postgres-based AI applications the past two years with a number of leading customers, and this product announcement is the outgrowth of this learning.We listened to customers as they refined their AI strategies in response to the rapid evolution of LLMs, Agentic AI and integration technologies such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and as we did so a few things stood out to us.First and foremost, many of the newly available tools and technologies are not suited to the needs of the enterprise, particularly in highly regulated industries or major government agencies.   Many of the new AI application builders and code generators – and the database platforms supporting them – do not adequately address enterprise requirements for high availability, data sovereignty, global deployment, security and compliance and the need in some cases to run on-premises or in self-managed cloud accounts.  As one CIO in financial services put it to us recently: “We’ve got a couple of dozen AI generated applications end users really want to put into production, but first we’ve got to figure out how to deploy them on our own internal compliant infrastructure.”Secondly, as compelling as it is to automate workflows with Agentic AI, or to generate new applications with tools like Claude Code, Cursor or Lovable, the biggest need is to work with existing databases and applications.  While newer Postgres-based cloud services work well with Agentic AI and AI app builders for brand new applications, they cannot accommodate existing databases and applications without a costly migration. And such a migration may well be to an environment that doesn’t meet the organization’s strict security and compliance requirements. Enterprise customers need AI tooling – including an MCP Server – that can operate against their existing databases.Additionally we saw there was no dedicated Postgres vendor offering a fully featured and fully supported MCP Server that works with all your existing Postgres databases.  Most of the available Postgres MCP Servers are tied to the vendor's own products, and in particular their cloud database offering.And thirdly, developing new AI applications – such as a chatbot running on top of an existing knowledge base – is overly complex with developers having to stitch together too many tools, APIs, Postgres extensions and data pipelines.  We saw an opportunity to make it easier to develop AI applications without having to undertake a major exercise in tool sourcing and integration.We are addressing each of these with the pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit for Postgres.  Together with pgEdge Enterprise Postgres or pgEdge Distributed Postgres it delivers on enterprise requirements such as high availability, data sovereignty and flexible deployment on-premises, in self managed cloud accounts or soon in our pgEdge Cloud managed cloud service.However, it is not tied to just our own Postgres offerings.   The pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit for Postgres, and in particular the included pgEdge Postgres MCP Server, work with any standard version of Postgres, including community Postgres and Amazon RDS.  This means you can download the toolkit from pgEdge, quickly configure Claude Code, or Cursor (and others) to use the pgEdge MCP Server (see here), and then in minutes be generating new UIs, applications and workflows running on top of your existing databases.  Or alternatively connect the pgEdge MCP Server to Claude Desktop, and use it to make recommendations for scaling and performance improvements. We could be biased, but we think this is a pretty big deal.  Key components of the pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit include:
  • The aforementioned pgEdge MCP Server, a highly performant and full featured MCP Server. It provides LLMs and agents with a secure connection to access Postgres databases and obtain detailed information about database structure and schemas, allowing them to reason about the data, schema, and performance metrics held within.
  • Natural Language Agents for querying data, available via a command line interface (CLI) or a web user interface. These are
  • full-featured MCP clients in Go, with Anthropic prompt caching (for a 90% cost reduction). The web client features a Modern React-based UI, demonstrating AI-powered chat for natural language database interaction.
  • pgEdge-vectorizer, a Postgres extension that automatically chunks text content and generates vector embeddings using background workers, providing a simple SQL interface for enabling vectorization on any table. Vector embeddings are automatically kept updated as the content changes.  pgEdge-vectorizer has no dependencies other than pgvector
  • and a connection to your LLM of choice.
  • pgEdge RAG Server, a dedicated API Server for
  • performing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) of text based on content from a PostgreSQL database using pgvector.
  • pgEdge-docloader, a utility that
  • makes it easy to bring initial material online and make it searchable by agents and can be used in conjunction with the pgEdge RAG Server and pgEdge Vectorizer. No external services or third-party pipelines are required beyond an embedding LLM provider.
  • VectorChord-bm25, a Postgres extension implementing BM25 ranked search for hybrid semantic and full-text searching. Also included are the pgvector, pg_tokenizer.rs and pg_vectorize extensions.
pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit for Postgres is fully open source, and available for free to all Postgres users. The pgEdge MCP Server works with Postgres versions from v14 on, other Toolkit components v16 on. pgEdge customers with paid subscriptions for pgEdge Enterprise Postgres or pgEdge Distributed Postgres receive support at no extra cost.  For self-hosted and self-managed deployment the product documentation and download can be found here. It will be available within the pgEdge Cloud managed service in Q1 2026.Today’s announcement is really just the beginning.   We look forward to seeing how developers use it to bring Agentic AI and AI generated apps to both new and existing databases while being able to deploy on enterprise grade infrastructure.  And we’d love to get your feedback!P.S. This blog post was entirely written by hand.  Any use of emdashes or bullet points is entirely my own doing. 

]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/building-ai-agents-on-postgres-why-we-built-the-pgedge-agentic-ai-toolkit Phillip Merrick pgEdge,PostgreSQL,PostgreSQL,Agentic AI <![CDATA[Introducing The pgEdge Postgres MCP Server]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/introducing-the-pgedge-postgres-mcp-server Wed, 17 Dec 2025 07:02:49 GMT Note: An update to the blog was released on 1/23. You can link to it here.One of the principal and most powerful components of the pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit is the pgEdge Postgres MCP Server. In just over a year MCP (Model Context Protocol), initially developed by Anthropic, has become the standard way to connect LLMs to external data sources and tools. Some people describe it as being like a USB for LLMs. The pgEdge Postgres MCP server makes it extremely easy to connect Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor and other AI development tools directly to Postgres database – not just pgEdge distributions, but standard community Postgres, Amazon RDS, and pretty much any other relatively standard version of Postgres (so long as it is v14 or newer).Let’s walk through how to set up the pgEdge Postgres MCP Server, what makes it different, and how to use it with Claude Desktop and AI code generators like Claude Code and Cursor. Our discussion is somewhat Claude-centric, but the pgEdge MCP Server also works with OpenAI GPT-5 and local models such as Ollama.

What Makes Our MCP Server for Postgres Different

Perhaps your first reaction to seeing our announcement was “wait, what? Another Postgres MCP Server”.  But it turns out until today there was no dedicated Postgres vendor offering a fully featured and fully supported MCP Server that works with all your existing Postgres databases.  Most of the available Postgres MCP Servers are tied to the vendor's own products, and in particular their cloud database offering.The pgEdge MCP Server provides flexible deployment options: on-premises, in self managed cloud accounts or soon in our pgEdge Cloud managed cloud service. Additionally, when used with pgEdge Distributed Postgres, applications making use of the pgEdge MCP Server can meet enterprise requirements for high availability, multi-region failover and data sovereignty.  Most Postgres MCP servers out there give you basic read-only access—enough to query schemas and run SELECT statements. We built ours to be production-grade from day one: - The MCP server doesn't just list your tables. It pulls detailed information about your database structure: primary keys, foreign keys, indexes, column types, constraints, the works. This lets Claude actually reason about your data model instead of just blindly querying it. - Want to know which queries are slow? Which indexes aren't being used? The server exposes pg_stat_statements and other data so the LLM can help you optimize performance, not just write queries. - Connect to multiple Postgres instances from the same MCP server. Useful when you're working across dev, staging, and production, or when you need to query both your application database and your analytics warehouse. For Claude Code and Desktop you do this by configuring multiple MCP server instances with different names e.g. devdb, stagingdb, proddb. For your own MCP clients you can refer to the Natural Language Agent client code found in our MCP server repo.) - Many MCP Servers are stdio only, and do not support HTTP.   In addition to full HTTP support we’ve added TLS support, user and token auth, and read-only enforcement (at initial beta the MCP server is readonly, but this will be switchable in a forthcoming release).

Installation and Setup

The MCP server is part of the pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit, which you can download directly from our site. It works with Postgres 16, 17, and 18. For a quick start first go to https://github.com/pgEdge/pgedge-postgres-mcp/releases and download the correct MCP server download for your OS and architecture. Then follow the instructions below.# Check that the MCP server binary is ready to use

Connecting to Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop is probably the easiest way to get started with MCP servers. Here's the full setup:

Step 1: Locate Your Config File

The configuration file location depends on your OS:
  • :
  • :
  • :
If this file doesn't exist, create it.

Step 2: Add the pgEdge MCP Server

Edit and add this configuration:

Step 3: Restart Claude Desktop

After saving your config, fully quit and restart Claude Desktop. When you open a new conversation, you should see a small hammer icon () in the interface—that's your MCP server connection.

Step 4: Test It Out

Open a new conversation and try:Claude will use the MCP server to introspect your schema and list all tables with descriptions.Try something more advanced:Or get performance insights:

Connecting to Claude Code

Claude Code is where things get really interesting — you can have Claude write code that directly queries your database, with full context about your schema.

Step 1: Create Project Config

In your project root, create a file:

Step 2: Launch Claude Code

Claude Code will automatically detect the file and establish the MCP server connection.

Step 3: Start Building

Now you can give Claude commands like:Write a Python script that queries the top 10 users by sign-up date and exports them to CSV.Claude will:
  • Inspect your database schema via the MCP server
  • Understand the structure of your users table
  • Write properly parameterized SQL
  • Generate the complete Python script with error handling
Or try:I need a function that efficiently checks if a user has a certain permission. Look at my permissions model and write the most performant query.Claude will examine your foreign key relationships, check which indexes exist, and write optimized SQL based on your actual schema.

Using with Cursor

Cursor has excellent MCP support. Here's how to connect:

Step 1: Open Cursor Settings

  • Open Cursor
  • Go to
  • Under Installed MCP Servers select Add Custom MCP

Step 2: Add Server Configuration

Using the Cursor edit window, edit :

Step 3: Verify Connection

After saving, you should see a green "active" status indicator next to the pgedge-postgres server in the MCP section of Cursor settings.

Step 4: Use in Cursor Chat

Open the Cursor chat panel and reference your database:Or while writing code:I'm writing a migration script. Show me the current schema for the orders table so I know what columns already exist.

Advanced Configuration Options

Multiple Database Connections

You can configure multiple MCP servers in the same config file to work with different databases:Now Claude can query both databases and even help you write queries that join data across them.Now Claude can query both databases and even help you write queries that join data across them.

Read-Only Mode

[The initial beta01 version only supports readonly mode.  This is applicable for later versions.]For production databases, you probably want read-only access. Grant your database user only SELECT privileges:

Environment Variables and Security 

Rather than putting the database password directly in JSON files, we can use a .pgpass file for password managementThen configure without PGPASSWORD in the config:

What Claude Can Do With Your Database

Once connected, here are some real workflows you can enable:

Schema exploration and documentation

Generate markdown documentation for all tables in the public schema, including column descriptions and relationships

Query optimization

This query is running slow: [paste query]. Analyze the execution plan and suggest indexes or rewrites.

Migration assistance

I need to add a new column to track user subscription tiers. Look at my users table and write a safe migration script.

Data analysis

Find all users who signed up in the last month but haven't completed onboarding

Debugging

I'm getting a foreign key violation on the orders table. Show me all foreign keys and help me understand what's wrong.

Under the Hood: How It Works

The pgEdge MCP server implements the full Model Context Protocol specification. When the LLM wants to interact with your database, here's what happens:
  • : The LLM queries the MCP server for available tools and resources
  • : The MCP server queries Postgres system catalogs (
  • ) to build a complete picture of your schema
  • : When the LLM needs to run a query or get performance metrics, it calls the appropriate MCP tool
  • : Results are streamed back to the LLM in a structured format
  • : the LLM uses this information to inform its responses and code generation
The server maintains a connection pool to your database, so repeated queries don't create new connections each time.

Troubleshooting

"Connection refused" errors

Check that your database is accessible from wherever you're running Claude Desktop/Code. Try connecting with psql first:

MCP server not showing up in Claude Desktop

  • Verify the JSON syntax in your config file (use a JSON validator)
  • Check that the path to the MCP server binary is correct and executable
  • Look at Claude Desktop logs:

"Permission denied" on database queries

Make sure your database user has appropriate permissions. For read-only access, you need at minimum:

What's Next

We're actively developing additional features for the MCP server:
  • Support for write operations with appropriate safeguards, including a readonly by default switch
  • Improved optimization to save on token usage in database queries
  • Better optimization of schema discovery
  • Additional work on database performance monitoring
  • Further work on security, authorization and governance (dependent on feedback from users on requirements for real-world enterprise use cases)
The full pgEdge Agentic AI Toolkit (MCP server, vectorizer, RAG server, docloader) is available now in beta. Everything is open source under the Postgres license, and we're eager for feedback from the community.If you're building AI applications on Postgres and need your agents to have direct, intelligent access to your data, give the pgEdge Postgres MCP server a try. It's built to work with your existing infrastructure, whether you're on community Postgres or running our distributed platform.Download the toolkit – we can’t wait to see what you build with it – and send us your feedback!— Phillip Merrick
Chairman & Chief Product Officer, pgEdge

]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/introducing-the-pgedge-postgres-mcp-server Phillip Merrick PostgreSQL,postgres,pgEdge <![CDATA[Introducing pgEdge Enterprise Postgres and full commitment to open source]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/introducing-pgedge-enterprise-postgres-and-full-commitment-to-open-source Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:04:04 GMT PostgreSQL is the fastest growing open source RDBMS according to DB-Engines and has won the hearts of developers three years running (StackOverflow’s Developer Survey 2023, 2024, 2025). Behind PostgreSQL is a vibrant community that has globally contributed to the project since 1994, causing its success as a truly adaptive database that can handle just about any use case and earning it the slogan, “Just Use Postgres!”Challenges such as guaranteeing high availability, simplifying day-to-day operations, preparing for scalable infrastructure, and serving the needs of usually globally distributed users aren’t new in the world of database administration. The challenge now has become how to obtain the benefits of a robust open-source platform backed by a thriving community, while still achieving the business needs of having a vendor who can provide certification and support that satisfies security, governance, and reliability requirements. That’s where pgEdge Enterprise Postgres, our newest release, provides the best of both worlds - the awesomeness of Postgres, backed by one of the most highly expert teams in the industry – providing a curated and dependable enterprise support experience modern businesses expect to deploy with confidence.We believe everyone should have access to software for highly available database deployments without high costs and without vendor lock-in. To that end, pgEdge is committed to furthering PostgreSQL’s ability to support highly available, distributed database infrastructure as a participant in the core PostgreSQL community. We are happy to announce that all distributed-ready components of pgEdge Enterprise Postgres and pgEdge Distributed Postgres are now 100% open-source under the permissive PostgreSQL Community License.

Enterprise-Grade Postgres, Out-of-the-Box

pgEdge Enterprise Postgres is an enterprise-grade PostgreSQL distribution that provides everything you need to run Postgres in production without piecing together disparate tools,  by curating essential tools and components into a single unified package. This ensures easy, consistent installation and employment of your database infrastructure along with everything you need to get up and running with a complete, enterprise-ready database environment.It’s designed to help enterprises:
  • Run mission-critical workloads with confidence.
  • Built-in
  • high availability
  • ensures uptime, while tested, enterprise-grade builds and security patches keep systems reliable and secure.
  • Adopt the latest PostgreSQL releases.
  • Support for
  • PostgreSQL v16 and v17
  • is included today, with
  • v18 support coming soon
  • , ensuring delivery of the latest  features and community enhancements.
  • Leverage enterprise-class extensions.
  • Out-of-the-box support for
  • pgAudit, pgBackrest, pgBouncer, PostGIS, pgVector
  • , and
  • more
  • means you have advanced monitoring, auditing, backup, pooling, and analytics capabilities built in.
  • Simplify management and monitoring.
  • Browser and desktop-based GUI management with
  • pgAdmin
  • makes administration straightforward, while curated defaults and performance tuning help teams accelerate deployments.
  • Prepare for distributed workloads.
  • pgEdge Enterprise Postgres is “distributed-ready” with built-in support for the
  • Spock multi-master logical replication extension
  • ,
  • Large Object Logical Replication (LOLOR)
  • , and
  • Snowflake Sequences
  • , making it simple to scale from single-node to distributed or multi-region deployments, at any time.
  • Near-zero downtime major version upgrades are possible out-of-the-box to help you meet high availability requirements, and
  • traditional instructions
  • for running zero-downtime upgrades fully apply.
  • Deploy anywhere.
  • Choose the model that fits your environment.
In short: pgEdge Enterprise Postgres gives you a faster path to secure, flexible and scalable Postgres, on your terms.

Improve Reliability and Scale of your Enterprise Applications

The real value of pgEdge Enterprise Postgres lies in its ability to help organizations grow without compromise.
  • Reduce risk
  • : Pre-tested builds and trusted PostgreSQL extensions lower operational complexity and help teams avoid costly downtime.
  • Improve agility
  • : Accelerate time-to-production by starting out with a single package that includes monitoring, advanced backup capabilities, support for high availability up to 99.999%, and more by default.
  • Scale seamlessly
  • : Start with a single instance, add replicas for high availability, and grow to globally distributed deployments, all without changing platforms.
  • Stay supported
  • :
  • Subscriptions
  • include
  • 24×7×365 global support
  • from seasoned Postgres experts with decades of experience and direct contributions to the PostgreSQL community, with optional
  • Forward Deployed Engineer services
  • for dedicated assistance.
For teams supporting business-critical workloads, pgEdge Enterprise Postgres delivers peace of mind, future-proof scalability, and freedom from vendor lock-in.

All pgEdge Components Are Now Fully Open Source

From this point forward, all pgEdge database server components are now fully open-sourced under the OSI-approved PostgreSQL License.This includes:
  • Spock
  • – multi-master logical replication, enabling true active-active deployments.
  • LOLOR
  • – Large Object Logical Replication for advanced replication scenarios.
  • Snowflake Sequences
  • – sequence support for distributed and high-scale applications.
These projects are now available under one of the most permissive open source licenses in the industry. The move ensures:
  • Transparency
  • : All source code is publicly available on GitHub.
  • Community alignment
  • : Contributions flow freely back to the PostgreSQL ecosystem.
  • Freedom of choice
  • : Organizations can deploy pgEdge technology without licensing restrictions or lock-in.

Get Started with pgEdge Enterprise Postgres

pgEdge Enterprise Postgres VM Edition is available immediately as part of a paid subscription, which includes tested builds, security updates released the same-day as the core PostgreSQL project, and 24x7x365 enterprise support. A pre-built, containerized version of pgEdge Enterprise Postgres, ideal for development, testing, and evaluation use is also available for download. pgEdge Enterprise Postgres - Container Edition with Kubernetes Operator support is targeted for release in Q4.   Learn more and try pgEdge Enterprise Postgres for free - www.pgedge.com/download Read the full Press Announcement

]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/introducing-pgedge-enterprise-postgres-and-full-commitment-to-open-source Phillip Merrick PostgreSQL,pgEdge,Distributed Postgres,PostgreSQL High Availability,Distributed Postgres,PostgreSQL,PostgreSQL High Availability,postgres <![CDATA[PostgreSQL in Mission-Critical Environments Survey Results ]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/postgresql-in-mission-critical-environments-survey-results Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:48:06 GMT An industry-wide survey conducted by Foundry (publishers of CIO, Information Week and other publications) reveals just how demanding enterprise availability requirements have become, and how dependent these IT leaders are on PostgreSQL for handling the workloads of modern applications. The research, spanning 212 IT decision-makers across enterprises with 500+ employees, conclusively showed 91% of organizations using PostgreSQL who participated in the survey require a minimum of 99.99% uptime—that's no more than 4 minutes of downtime per month. Even more striking, 24% of the total respondents can tolerate no more than 30 seconds of monthly downtime, indicating that PostgreSQL has firmly established itself as the backbone of mission-critical systems.The survey data paints a picture of an ecosystem in transition. With 37% of PostgreSQL deployments now supporting mission-critical applications and 30% standardized across most organizational workloads, the database has evolved far beyond its origins as an alternative to proprietary systems. This percentage is critical in revealing enterprise trust in Postgres as a reliable database management system, especially as when downtime occurs, the impact is severe—56% face delayed business operations, 49% experience support spikes, and 40% suffer brand trust damage.Even with strong dependence on highly available systems, nearly half (47%) have adopted multi-region deployments, but many still depend on cloud-native solutions that create vendor lock-in and may not provide the flexibility needed for true resilience. Despite this, a surprising 82% of organizations express concern about cloud region failures, and 21% have directly experienced cloud failures firsthand in the past year. The developer community's overall response is telling: 79% of organizations are either evaluating or considering distributed PostgreSQL solutions within the next 12 months. This represents a massive shift toward architectures that can deliver the extreme availability requirements modern applications demand, and showcases that Postgres is capable of delivering such a guarantee. Multi-master replication (MMR), also known as active-active replication, is generating particular interest among the 47% deploying across multiple cloud regions as it offers the promise of active-active configurations that can maintain operations and help organizations meet demanding availability requirements.For developers building the next generation of applications, these findings underscore the importance of thinking beyond traditional approaches to high availability and low latency. The era of accepting minutes of downtime for database maintenance or regional outages is rapidly ending, replaced by user expectations of always-on services. As PostgreSQL continues to prove its capability in mission-critical environments, the focus is shifting from whether it can handle enterprise workloads to choosing the best method for leveraging PostgreSQL while addressing the extreme availability that many modern businesses require.Ready to dive deeper into the survey findings and explore solutions for extreme PostgreSQL availability? Download the full report to access comprehensive insights, strategic recommendations, and detailed analysis of enterprise PostgreSQL deployment patterns.

]]> https://www.pgedge.com/blog/postgresql-in-mission-critical-environments-survey-results Phillip Merrick