Configure database extensions

This section contains information about configuring the database extensions that Database Service supports.

Install an extension

Extensions can only be installed on the primary DBCluster. Once installed, the extension is replicated to standby instances.

Most of the extensions can be installed directly by connecting to the database cluster and running the CREATE EXTENSION command.

However, there are a few extensions that require additional configuration, hence users must set database flag, "dbs.enable_<extension-name>": "on" then connect to the database cluster and run the CREATE EXTENSION command.

Only database users who are members of the cloudsqlsuperuser or alloydbsuperuser role can run the CREATE EXTENSION command. By default, this includes the dbsadmin user.

Drop an extension

In order to drop an extension, the database user attempting to do so must be the owner of the extension. This implies that only the database user who initially created the extension has the authority to drop it. No other database user possesses the ability to drop the extension, ensuring controlled management of extensions.

Supported database extensions

The following table lists all of the supported extensions.

Extension Included with PostgreSQL Included with AlloyDB Omni Description
address_standardizer Used to parse an address into constituent elements. Generally used to support geocoding address normalization step.
address_standardizer_data_us Address Standardizer US dataset example
alloydb_ai_nl Google Extension for AlloyDB AI & Natural Language
amcheck Provides functions for verifying the logical consistency of the structure of relations, enabling the pg_amcheck application to check for corruption.
anon Masks or replaces personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive data from a PostgreSQL database.
autonic Provides functions for auto incrementing fields
bloom Provides a method to access indexes based on bloom filters. A bloom filter is a space-efficient data structure that you can use to test whether an element is a member of a set.
btree_gin Provides sample GIN operator classes that implement B-tree equivalent behavior.
btree_gist Provides GiST index operator classes that implement B-tree equivalent behavior.
citext Provides a case-insensitive character string type citext.
cube Implements a data type cube for representing multidimensional cubes.
dblink Provides functions to connect to PostgreSQL databases from within a database session
dict_int An add-on dictionary template for full-text search that controls the indexing of integers.
dict_xsyn Text search dictionary template for extended synonym processing
earthdistance Provides two approaches to calculating great circle distances on the surface of the Earth.
fuzzystrmatch Provides several functions to determine similarities and distance between strings.
google_columnar_engine Provides the columnar engine feature of AlloyDB, which handles HTAP (hybrid transactional analytical processing) and OLAP (online analytical processing) workloads very efficiently.
google_db_advisor Provides the index advisor feature of AlloyDB, which recommends indexes to speed up query processing.
google_ml_integration Provides functions you use to access Vertex AI endpoints to get predictions in SQL.
postgresql-hll Provides a HyperLogLog (hll) data structure that estimates the cardinality of a set.
hstore Implements the hstore data type for storing sets of key/value pairs within a single PostgreSQL value.
hypopg Provides support for hypothetical indexes.
insert_username Provides functions for storing the current user's name into a text field. You can use this function to track which user last modified a row in a database table.
intagg Provides an integer aggregator and an enumerator.
intarray Provides a set of functions and operators for manipulating null-free arrays of integers and performing indexed searches on them.
ip4r Provides data types for IPv4/v6 addresses, and address ranges, plus index support.
isn Provides data types for some international product numbering standards.
lo Support for managing Large Objects (also called LOs or BLOBs).
ltree Implements a data type ltree for representing labels of data stored in a hierarchical tree-like structure.
moddatetime Provides functions for storing the current time into a timestamp field. You can use this to track the last time that a row in a database table is modified.
orafce Provides functions and operators that emulate a subset of functions and packages from an Oracle database. Use these functions to port Oracle applications to PostgreSQL.
pageinspect Inspects the contents of database pages at a low level.
pg_bigm Enables full-text search, and allows a two-gram (bigram) index for faster full-text search.
pg_buffercache Provides a means for examining what's happening in the shared buffer cache in real time.
pg_cron Provides a cron-based job scheduler. This extension enables cron syntax to schedule PostgreSQL commands directly from the database.
pg_freespacemap Examines the free space map (FSM).
pg_hint_plan Lets you to improve PostgreSQL execution plans using hints, which are descriptions in SQL comments.
pg_partman Lets you to create and manage time-based and serial-based table partition sets.
pg_prewarm Provides a convenient way to load relation data into either the operating system buffer cache or the PostgreSQL buffer cache.
pg_proctab Lets you to use pg_top, and generate reports from the operating system process table.
pg_repack Lets you remove bloat from tables and indexes. Optionally, lets you perform an online CLUSTER (order tables by cluster index).
pg_similarity Provides support for similarity queries on PostgreSQL.
pg_squeeze Removes unused space from a table and optionally uses an index to sort records or rows (tuples) of the table.
pg_stat_statements Provides a means for tracking execution statistics of all SQL statements executed.
pg_trgm Provides functions and operators for determining the similarity of alphanumeric text based on trigram matching, as well as index operator classes that support fast searching for similar strings.
pg_visibility Provides a way to examine the visibility map (VM) and the page-level visibility information of a table.
pg_wait_sampling Collects sampling statistics of wait events, providing wait event data for processes on servers.
pgaudit Provides detailed session and object audit logging using the standard logging facility provided by PostgreSQL.
pgcrypto Provides cryptographic functions for PostgreSQL.
pgfincore A set of functions to manage pages in operating system disk cache memory from PostgreSQL.
pglogical Provides logical replication for PostgreSQL.
pgrouting Extends PostGIS, enabling geospatial processing through network routing and analysis.
pgrowlocks Provides row locking information for the specified table.
pgstattuple Provides various functions to obtain tuple-level statistics.
pgtap Provides a unit testing framework for PostgreSQL, written in PL/pgSQL and PL/SQL.
pgtt Adds support for global temporary tables to your databases.
plpgsql A loadable procedural language for creating functions, procedures and triggers. You also can use this language for direct execution of code in DO blocks.
plproxy Procedural language handler that allows remote procedure calls among PostgreSQL databases, with optional sharding.
plv8 Provides a procedural language for enabling JavaScript.
postgis PostGIS geometry and geography spatial types and functions
postgres_ann PostgreSQL ANN Search
postgis_raster PostGIS raster types and functions
postgis_sfcgal PostGIS SFCGAL functions
postgis_tiger_geocoder PostGIS tiger geocoder and reverse geocoder
postgis_topology PostGIS topology spatial types and functions
postgres_fdw Allows foreign data wrappers to be created within instances or across instances.
prefix Provides prefix-matching, plus index support.
rdkit Provides functions for comparing, manipulating, and identifying molecular structures.
refint Includes functions to check foreign key restraints, the referencing table, and the referenced table.
sslinfo Provides information about the SSL certificate that the current client provided when it connected to the instance.
tablefunc Includes various functions that return tables (multiple rows).
tcn Provides a trigger function that notifies listeners of changes to the content of database tables.
temporal_tables Provides support for temporal tables. A temporal table records the period of time when a row is valid from a database perspective.
tsm_system_rows Provides the table sampling method SYSTEM_ROWS, which can be used in the TABLESAMPLE clause of a SELECT command.
tsm_system_time Provides the table sampling method SYSTEM_TIME, which can be used in the TABLESAMPLE clause of a SELECT command.
unaccent A text search dictionary that removes accents (diacritic signs) from lexemes.
uuid-ossp Provides functions to generate universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) using one of several standard algorithms.
pgvector An open-source extension for storing and searching vector embeddings in PostgreSQL databases.