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YDB into Apache Arrow with ADBC

YDB 23.4 (PostgreSQL wire), 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

Driver and connection string

ODBC driver

psqlodbc 16 (PG wire)

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=15444;Database=local;Uid=adbcuser;Pwd=Ydb!Bridge2026;BoolsAsChar=0;UseServerSidePrepare=0;

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=15444;Database=local;Uid=adbcuser;Pwd=Ydb!Bridge2026;BoolsAsChar=0;UseServerSidePrepare=0;")
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 YDB 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

distributed HTAP store behind a PostgreSQL-compatible wire; version() names it PostgreSQL 16, so the two quirks are keyed on the one thing that gives YDB away over ODBC — it answers SHOW server_version with that whole banner rather than a version number: every table needs a PRIMARY KEY, and no ingested column can be one (a YDB key is implicitly NOT NULL), so generated ingest DDL appends adbc_pk SERIAL PRIMARY KEY (ddl_extra_column), and pg_catalog.pg_attribute is empty, so psqlodbc's SQLColumns answers success with zero rows and GetObjects describes a zero-row SELECT instead (no_sql_columns).

What this stack needed

• Server side: its PG wire has no NULL bind parameter at all — a -1 parameter length is read as a zero-length value, silently storing '' in a text column — so the entry sets psqlodbc's UseServerSidePrepare=0 and every NULL goes as a literal; NUMERIC precision is not reported; the image ships no users and no environment variable for the PG feature flags, so a role is created after start-up and both are covered by the setup notes; ingest 1.8k rows/s (1.8k with array binding) -- UseServerSidePrepare=0 means psqlodbc inlines every value into the statement text, and YDB parses and plans the result, which is what caps this; still 32x the 55 rows/s one INSERT per row manages; fetch 654k rows/s

Native ADBC driver, compared

YDB 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:

Where the native driver stops it is by design of that driver, not a defect of YDB; the full table for all 28 wire-compatible databases, with each first error, is in the note.

Read next

• Where the native PostgreSQL and MySQL ADBC drivers stop on wire-compatible databases
• Where PostgreSQL-wire servers part company with PostgreSQL
• Two psqlodbc bugs that lost rows and narrowed integers, and two traps