HeliosDB Use Cases

AI agents require persistent, semantically-searchable memory to maintain context across conversations, learn from interactions, and provide personalized experiences.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems require fast, accurate semantic search to retrieve relevant context before LLM inference.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) enables AI assistants like Claude to interact with external tools and data sources through a standardized interface.

HeliosDB Nano enables e-commerce platforms to deliver personalized product discovery combining search + recommendations + inventory in a single embedded database.

HeliosDB Lite runs vector similarity search in SQL, with VECTOR columns, HNSW indexes and distance operators next to ordinary data.

HeliosDB Lite keeps embeddings next to business data, so AI applications combine similarity search and SQL filters in one query.

HeliosDB Lite keeps sensor time series and pattern embeddings in one table, combining columnar aggregation with vector similarity.

HeliosDB Lite combines PostgreSQL-style full-text predicates and vector similarity in one SQL query for documentation search.

HeliosDB Lite powers product search by meaning, with embeddings, an HNSW index and price or category filters in one SQL query.

HeliosDB Lite runs vector similarity search on the edge device itself, with HNSW indexes and SIMD-accelerated distance computation.

HeliosDB Lite runs as one database container per microservice, with its data on a volume and a built-in health check.

HeliosProxy takes failing HeliosDB Lite nodes out of rotation with a per-node circuit breaker and probes them before returning them.

Semantic caching of RAG retrievals in HeliosProxy is planned; its query cache serves repeated read queries today.

Planned: semantic (similarity-matched) result caching in HeliosProxy is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Conversation-context caching for chatbots is planned; HeliosDB Lite keeps conversation history in ordinary tables today.

Planned: conversation-context caching is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Tool-result caching for AI agents is planned; agents can persist their sessions and tool outputs in HeliosDB Lite tables today.

Planned: tool-result caching for AI agents is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

HeliosDB Full serves RAG retrieval through its HTTP gateway (documents, vector stores, hybrid search, embeddings and chat); SQL vector indexes and SQL search functions are planned.

Planned: SQL vector indexes, SQL search and RAG functions and natural-language-to-SQL are on the roadmap; use the HTTP gateway's document, vector-store and chat routes today. Read the documentation.

AI-driven data-growth forecasting and capacity planning for HeliosDB Full are planned.

Planned: data-growth forecasting and capacity recommendations are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Three HeliosProxy plugins for AI traffic: ai-classifier detects LLM-generated SQL, token-budget gates cost per agent and model, and llm-guardrail refuses dangerous SQL such as DROP or a missing WHERE.

HeliosProxy's pgvector-router plugin routes pgvector top-K queries (<->, <#> or <=> in ORDER BY) to a vector-tagged replica; the same query without ORDER BY goes to the default route.

Row-level security is reachable only through the embedded API and the REPL, not over the PostgreSQL wire, MySQL wire or REST. Read the documentation.

Row-level security is reachable only through the embedded API and the REPL, not over the PostgreSQL wire, MySQL wire or REST. Read the documentation.

HeliosDB Lite isolates tenants in shared tables with row-level security enforced for PostgreSQL wire sessions and REST requests.

Superusers bypass row-level security; give each tenant its own non-superuser role and start the server with SCRAM authentication so clients cannot claim another role. Read the documentation.

HeliosDB Lite runs multi-tenant SaaS data in shared tables, with one role per tenant and row-level security on wire and REST.

Superusers bypass row-level security; give each tenant its own non-superuser role and start the server with SCRAM authentication so clients cannot claim another role. Read the documentation.

HeliosProxy isolates tenants that share one HeliosDB Lite database by injecting a tenant predicate into their queries.

HeliosProxy injects the tenant filter only into queries on the tables listed in tenant_tables, and it identifies the tenant from a connection attribute (application_name by default). Read the documentation.

HeliosProxy pools many SaaS client connections onto fewer HeliosDB Lite backend connections in session, transaction or statement mode.

HeliosDB Lite limits each role's request rate with CREATE ROLE ... RATE_LIMIT, so tenants with their own roles get separate budgets.

HeliosProxy keeps client sessions alive across a primary failover by reconnecting, restoring session settings and optionally replaying the open transaction.

HeliosDB Lite replication needs a binary built with the ha-tier1 feature; promoting the standby is a manual or external step. Read the documentation.

HeliosDB Lite takes over PostgreSQL workloads: load a cleaned pg_dump with psql and keep the application's PostgreSQL driver.

HeliosProxy routes writes to the primary, reads to standbys and analytical queries to a dedicated HeliosDB Lite node.

HeliosDB Full serves PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle clients from one server over shared tables, with more wire-protocol listeners and an HTTP gateway in the same process.

MongoDB, Cassandra and SQL Server clients can connect and authenticate, and reading and writing HeliosDB tables through them is planned, as are the GraphQL, Snowflake and DB2 interfaces. Read the documentation.

A no-code, natural-language database builder for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: a natural-language database builder and natural-language-to-SQL are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Automated migration with schema mapping, query translation and live cutover for HeliosDB Full is planned; per-database migration guides cover the steps today.

Planned: automated schema mapping, query translation and live-replication cutover are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

HeliosProxy's POST /api/replay re-executes the committed transactions its recovery journal holds for a time window, either best effort or in commit order stopping at the first failure.

HeliosProxy includes a zero-downtime PostgreSQL major-version upgrade orchestrator whose validation stage checks row-count parity.

Plugins ship as .tar.gz OCI artefacts with versioned manifest.json + signed plugin.wasm.

HeliosProxy's POST /api/shadow runs a query against the primary and a shadow backend in parallel and compares order-independent result digests, bounded by max_rows and max_bytes.

HeliosProxy's residency-router plugin routes each user's queries only to replicas tagged with the user's region and answers a cross-region read with a PostgreSQL error.

HeliosDB Lite runs dashboard aggregations on live operational tables, with columnar storage for the analytical columns.

HeliosDB Lite traces query timing per session and reports percentile latencies and the slowest statements in SQL.

HeliosProxy rewrites SQL on its way to HeliosDB Lite with ordered rules that add predicates, limits or table redirects.

HeliosDB Lite removes duplicates in SQL with SELECT DISTINCT and counts unique values with COUNT(DISTINCT).

HeliosDB Lite computes rankings, running totals and row-to-row comparisons with SQL window functions over PARTITION BY and ORDER BY.

In-database time-series forecasting for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: in-database time-series forecasting is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Continuous streaming queries over Kafka topics for HeliosDB Full are planned.

Planned: continuous streaming queries and Kafka integration are on the roadmap.

Conversational BI with multi-turn natural-language questions for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: conversational BI and natural-language-to-SQL are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Approximate query processing with confidence bounds for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: approximate and probabilistic queries are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Statistics-driven, adaptive cardinality estimation for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: automatic statistics collection and adaptive cardinality estimation are on the roadmap.

HeliosDB Nano provides AES-256-GCM transparent data encryption at rest, with the key read from an environment variable or a file; cloud KMS key sources are planned.

Encryption is compiled in but disabled at runtime by default and needs a configured key. Read the documentation.

Built-in audit logging for HeliosDB Lite, an append-only SQL-queryable record of schema, data and login events, is planned.

Planned: built-in audit logging in the Lite server is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Homomorphic encryption, differential privacy and federated learning for HeliosDB Full are planned.

Planned: homomorphic encryption, differential privacy and federated learning are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

A blockchain-backed, tamper-evident audit trail for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: the blockchain-backed audit trail and data lineage are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

HeliosProxy's anomaly-detection feature flags SQL injection payloads, credential-stuffing bursts and novel query shapes at the proxy and lists the events at GET /anomalies.

Every query record embeds the SHA-256 of the previous record's bytes; auditors recompute the chain and any modified record breaks the link.

Per-role substring-based column masking with whole-word matcher and idempotence detection (skips already-rewritten patterns).

HeliosDB Lite shrinks large tables with per-column storage modes: dictionary encoding, columnar batches and content-addressed deduplication.

HeliosDB Lite stores JSON documents in JSONB columns and queries them with PostgreSQL operators next to relational data.

Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake tables with a unified catalog for HeliosDB Full are planned.

Planned: Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake tables and a unified catalog are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Change data capture with Kafka and Kinesis delivery for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: CDC connectors for Kafka and Kinesis are on the roadmap.

Serverless scale-to-zero and autoscaling for HeliosDB Full are planned; the current release runs as a single server.

Planned: serverless scale-to-zero and autoscaling are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Energy-aware and carbon-aware workload scheduling for HeliosDB Full is a planned research item.

Planned: energy-aware and carbon-aware scheduling is a research item on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

OpenTelemetry trace and metric export for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: OpenTelemetry trace and metric export is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

A FinOps cost optimizer for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: cost analytics and optimization recommendations are on the roadmap.

HeliosProxy's query-cache feature serves repeated read results from two in-process tiers, an LRU hot cache and a warm cache keyed by normalized query fingerprints, with TTL expiry and commit-aware invalidation; a semantic tier is planned.

Cache-first proxy for geo-distributed deployments.

Per-tenant minute / hour / day query-cost budgets.

HeliosDB Nano delivers an offline-first, embedded database solution purpose-built for IoT and edge computing deployments where cloud connectivity is intermittent, expensive, or unreliable.

HeliosDB Lite runs as a local SQL server on IoT gateways, collecting and querying sensor data on site.

HeliosDB Lite runs as one self-contained server process at edge sites, serving SQL locally over the PostgreSQL wire and REST.

Offline-first edge sync for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: offline-first edge sync is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Current workarounds involve full database backups, application-level change tracking, or expensive cloud database dependencies that violate edge computing requirements.

HeliosDB Nano's Database Branching feature brings Git-like version control directly to your database, enabling zero-downtime schema migrations, A/B testing, and parallel development workflows.

HeliosDB Nano serves a REST API over HTTP, so applications without a PostgreSQL driver can run queries and manage the database.

Row-level security is reachable only through the embedded API and the REPL, not over the PostgreSQL wire, MySQL wire or REST. Read the documentation.

HeliosDB Lite queries earlier states of a table with AS OF TIMESTAMP, AS OF TRANSACTION or AS OF SCN.

HeliosDB Lite creates copy-on-write database branches for development, testing and migration rehearsals, then merges or drops them in SQL.

HeliosDB Lite serves a JWT-authenticated REST API for SQL queries, statements, branches and schema inference over HTTP.

Natural-language schema design for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: natural-language schema design is on the roadmap.

Automated zero-downtime schema evolution for HeliosDB Full is planned; the schema evolution runbook covers additive changes today.

Planned: online DDL with shadow tables, traffic validation and automatic rollback is on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

HeliosProxy's WASM plugin runtime runs sandboxed WebAssembly plugins on the pre_query, post_query and route hooks; it is built with the wasm-plugins feature.

HeliosDB Nano implements the PostgreSQL wire protocol and a large subset of PostgreSQL SQL, so psql, pgAdmin, DBeaver and most PostgreSQL drivers connect to it.

Wire compatibility is not semantic parity: Nano implements the PostgreSQL wire protocol and a large subset of PostgreSQL SQL, collation is byte-order (C) only, and row-level security is not enforced over the wire protocols. Read the documentation.

HeliosDB Lite speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so standard PostgreSQL drivers, ORMs and psql connect to it directly.

HeliosDB Lite supports PostgreSQL LISTEN, UNLISTEN and NOTIFY over the wire protocol for event notifications without a broker.

HeliosDB Nano's Materialized Views with Auto-Refresh deliver pre-computed query results with intelligent, CPU-aware automatic refresh capabilities.

HeliosDB Lite stores pre-computed query results in materialized views refreshed with SQL; automatic background refresh is planned.

Planned: automatic background refresh of materialized views in the Lite server is on the roadmap; refresh them with REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW today. Read the documentation.

HeliosDB Lite explains query plans with EXPLAIN and EXPLAIN ANALYZE, including cost estimates and an OLTP or OLAP classification.

Automatic index recommendations for HeliosDB Lite are planned; EXPLAIN and EXPLAIN ANALYZE show where an index would help today.

Planned: automatic index recommendations are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Quantum-inspired query optimization is a research item for HeliosDB Full; it is planned and not in the current release.

Planned: quantum-inspired query optimization is a research item on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Autonomous self-healing agents for HeliosDB Full are planned.

Planned: autonomous self-healing agents are on the roadmap. Read the documentation.

Workload-driven materialized view selection and maintenance for HeliosDB Full is planned.

Planned: automatic materialized view selection, incremental refresh and query rewriting are on the roadmap.

Distributed deadlock detection and prevention for HeliosDB Full is planned together with clustering.

Planned: distributed deadlock detection is on the roadmap together with clustering. Read the documentation.

Optimizer hints in SQL comments (index, join order, parallelism, cache) for HeliosDB Full are planned.

Planned: optimizer hints are on the roadmap.

HeliosProxy serves repeated read queries for HeliosDB Lite from in-process cache tiers with commit-aware invalidation.

HeliosProxy gives a HeliosDB Lite primary and warm standby one endpoint: writes and transactions run on the primary, side-effect-free reads on healthy standbys.

HeliosDB Lite replication needs a binary built with the ha-tier1 feature; standby write forwarding covers simple-protocol statements only. Read the documentation.