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Overview

Who needs this book

Anyone whose database is a managed cloud service — Amazon RDS or Aurora, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Google Cloud SQL, or a similar provider. If you run PostgreSQL yourself, you can skip this book: CREATE EXTENSION pg_relay and the User Guide are all you need.

On a self-managed PostgreSQL installation, you install the extension with CREATE EXTENSION pg_relay. On a managed cloud database service, that is not possible — cloud providers do not allow arbitrary third-party extensions to be installed. (If you need a reminder of how the extension and the Processor fit together, see How pg_relay Works.)

This book explains the workaround, which is straightforward and works the same way on every managed PostgreSQL service, and gives you step-by-step setup instructions for:

  • AWS RDS for PostgreSQL
  • AWS Aurora for PostgreSQL
  • Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server
  • Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
  • Generic cloud PostgreSQL — DigitalOcean, Neon, Railway, Render, Supabase, and similar services

The Processor binary is an ordinary PostgreSQL client program. It connects over the network using standard libpq (PostgreSQL's client connection library) environment variables, and needs no changes at all, regardless of where it runs or which cloud provider hosts your database.

Continue to Why the Extension Can't Just Be Installed for exactly what the workaround involves.