HeliosDB-Full vs PostgreSQL 14 — Performance Comparison

Setup (internal tests, HeliosDB Full 7.2.0 vs PostgreSQL 14.20): HeliosDB Full as a compiled binary on port 5435; PostgreSQL in a Docker container on port 25432 Table: 1000 rows, 5 columns (INT, TEXT, TEXT, INT, TEXT) Protocol: PostgreSQL wire protocol (psycopg2)

Results

Test	Queries	HeliosDB avg	PostgreSQL avg	Winner
Point Lookups	2000	75us	132us	HeliosDB 1.8x FASTER
Full Scan SELECT	200	323us	859us	HeliosDB 2.7x FASTER
Aggregates	198	55us	148us	HeliosDB 2.7x FASTER
Single-Row INSERT	500	75us	481us	HeliosDB 6.4x FASTER
UPDATE WHERE	500	83us	466us	HeliosDB 5.6x FASTER
DELETE WHERE	200	70us	450us	HeliosDB 6.5x FASTER
Mixed OLTP	1000	82us	271us	HeliosDB 3.3x FASTER

What the Run Exercised

1. Primary-key point lookups served from the in-memory primary-key index instead of a table scan
2. Group-commit write-ahead log: batched WAL writes (26x faster internal writes in the same tests)
3. SQL parse cache: parsed statements reused for repeated query patterns
4. Lower SELECT overhead: fewer allocations per returned row
5. Finer tracing spans: diagnostic visibility into row processing

Notes

• Both databases accessed via psycopg2 over TCP loopback (127.0.0.1)
• HeliosDB uses LSM-tree storage; PostgreSQL uses heap + B-tree indexes
• PostgreSQL has years of production optimization; HeliosDB is research-grade
• Network round-trip and psycopg2 overhead are included in both measurements
• Both tables have PRIMARY KEY on id (equal conditions)
• HeliosDB point lookups use the in-memory primary-key index (populated during INSERT)
• PostgreSQL uses B-tree index on PRIMARY KEY