PostgreSQL into Apache Arrow with ADBC
PostgreSQL 16, read and written through adbcBridge — the ADBC driver that loads the database's ODBC driver — verified on Linux, macOS arm64 and Windows x64. Everything below is the compatibility matrix's record for this row.
Status
PASS
PASS (PostgreSQL 15.15)
PASS (PostgreSQL 16.15, psqlodbc 18.00.0002 PostgreSQL Unicode(x64); postgres:16 container)
Driver and connection string
- ODBC driver
- psqlodbc 16
- Wire
- PostgreSQL wire
- adbcBridge
- 0.1.1 (release)
The connection string the matrix used, as the connection strings reference records it (PostgreSQL wire); {drv} is the driver library or its name from odbcinst.ini, and the host, port and credentials are the test server's.
Driver={drv};Server=127.0.0.1;Port=15432;Database=adbc;Uid=adbc;Pwd=adbc;Python
import adbcbridge
# {drv}: the ODBC driver library (path), or its name from odbcinst.ini
conn = adbcbridge.connect(uri="Driver={drv};Server=127.0.0.1;Port=15432;Database=adbc;Uid=adbc;Pwd=adbc;")
with conn.cursor() as cur:
cur.execute("SELECT * FROM my_table")
table = cur.fetch_arrow_table() # pyarrow.Table
Polars and pandas
import polars as pl, pandas as pd
df = pl.read_database("SELECT * FROM my_table", connection=conn) # Polars, Arrow-native
pdf = pd.read_sql("SELECT * FROM my_table", conn) # pandas 2.2+, ADBC connection
pip install adbcbridge brings the driver library; the PostgreSQL ODBC driver is installed the way its vendor documents, then named in Driver=. Rust, Go, C# and Java use the same connection string through their ADBC driver managers — see the docs.
What the matrix recorded
native delegation to adbc_driver_postgresql when installed; bulk ingest sends one array parameter per column (INSERT … SELECT * FROM unnest(?::t[], …)) rather than K row-groups of cells — a server quirk keyed on version(), so no other PG-wire server here gets it; partitioned reads split on ctid (1.21x native at 1 M rows, 1.55x at 10 M), and a declaratively partitioned parent — which has no heap of its own and used to get one partition — now takes the key-range split, 1.36x native
Native ADBC driver, compared
PostgreSQL speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so Apache Arrow's native PostgreSQL ADBC driver (adbc-driver-postgresql 1.12.0) can be pointed at it too. On 2026-09-05 the same seven-step ADBC workload (connect, SELECT 1, DDL and inserts and a read, a 1,000-row adbc_ingest, table schema, catalog listing, read back) ran through both:
| Path | Result | First error |
|---|---|---|
| Native ADBC driver | ✓ all seven steps | |
| adbcBridge over ODBC | ✓ all seven steps |
Where the native driver stops it is by design of that driver, not a defect of PostgreSQL; the full table for all 28 wire-compatible databases, with each first error, is in the note.