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PostgreSQL, widely regarded as the world’s most advanced open-source relational database, continues to set the standard for performance, scalability, and flexibility in modern data infrastructure. While it has always been a top contender, each new release of PostgreSQL introduces powerful features and enhancements that make it an even more compelling choice for developers, database administrators, and IT leaders alike.

PostgreSQL is by design lightweight and un-opinionated but its killer feature has long been its extensions ecosystem. The extensions ecosystem adapts and customizes PostgreSQL data storage and manipulation use cases, making it suitable for AI, analytics, document data stores and more. This flexibility keeps PostgreSQL viable as an option for any business or startup, as it’s hard to ‘outgrow’ PostgreSQL.

KIP‑1150 - Diskless Topics is live. KIP-1150 Diskless Topics ship in Aiven Kafka BYOC on AWS, GCP, and Azure. Data goes straight to object storage—no local replicas, up to 80% lower TCO.

In this article, we will be continuing our series of deep dives into KIP-405. Previously, we covered: Now, we turn our attention to the internals of the read and delete paths. Just like we did for the write and metadata, here we will also be focusing on Aiven’s battle-tested Apache-licensed KIP-405 plugin. What makes the read path particularly interesting is how it delivers latency comparable to local disk or memory systems despite leveraging external object storage—let's dive in!