Explore PolarDB‑X v2.4.2: New Proxy, Multi‑Language Connectors, and High‑Performance Features

PolarDB‑X v2.4.2 Release Overview

PolarDB‑X (Alibaba Cloud’s cloud‑native distributed database) officially released version 2.4.2 in September 2025, adding a new client driver (PolarDB‑X Connector), a new open‑source polardbx‑proxy component, and fixing numerous issues such as DDL online changes, scaling, and data TTL.

PolarDB‑X Distributed Edition Introduction

PolarDB‑X is a cloud‑native integrated database that combines centralized and distributed architectures using a shared‑nothing storage‑compute separation design. It supports horizontal scaling, distributed transactions, mixed workloads, high availability, high throughput, large storage, low latency, and full MySQL compatibility.

PolarDB offers multiple deployment forms (public cloud, private cloud, DBStack, lightweight) that share the same kernel version, ensuring compatibility across environments and reducing management cost.

New Features in v2.4.2

polardbx‑proxy Component

polardbx‑proxy is a Java‑based high‑performance proxy for PolarDB‑X Standard Edition. It provides automatic master node detection, seamless HA switching, read‑write separation, instance‑level connection pooling, load balancing, and other capabilities. The open‑source repository is https://github.com/polardb/polardbx-proxy.

Read‑write separation & load balancing based on active request count

Consistent read from replicas

Transaction‑level connection pool

Fast HA detection & idempotent retry connection retention

Prepared‑statement performance boost & pass‑through

Feature Experience

Deploy the proxy with a Docker image and start it with a single command.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/polardb/polardbx-proxy/refs/heads/main/polardbx-proxy/quick_start.sh
quick_start.sh -e backend_address=127.0.0.1:3306 -e backend_username=appuser -e backend_password=appuser -e memory=4294967296

backend_address: database IP:port (leader or follower)

backend_username: database user

backend_password: password (must use mysql_native_password)

memory: proxy memory in bytes (recommended 16 GB, minimum 4 GB)

After startup the proxy listens on port 3307 and can be accessed directly.

mysql -Ac -h127.0.0.1 -P3307 -uappuser -pappuser

Management Commands

show cluster – query PolarDB‑X Paxos cluster information

show rw / show ro – view proxy connection pool status

show properties – view proxy configuration parameters

JDBC/GO/C++ Client Drivers

PolarDB‑X Connector provides multi‑language drivers with automatic master node detection, HA switching, read‑write separation, and load balancing. Compared with the proxy, it reduces the need for an extra proxy deployment.

Supports JDBC, Go, and C++

Directly connects to PolarDB‑X 2.0 Standard or Enterprise edition

Provides load balancing across multiple nodes in Enterprise edition

Driver download links:

Java: https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/alibaba/polardbx/polardbx-connector-java

Go: https://github.com/polardb/polardbx-connector-go

C++: https://github.com/polardb/polardbx-connector-cpp

JDBC Usage Example

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.alibaba.polardbx</groupId>
    <artifactId>polardbx-connector-java</artifactId>
    <version>2.2.10</version>
</dependency>

Class.forName("com.alibaba.polardbx.Driver");
try (final Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(
        "jdbc:polardbx://127.0.0.1:3306/", "root", "*****");
     final Statement stmt = conn.createStatement()) {
    try (final ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select 1")) {
        for (int i = 0; i < rs.getMetaData().getColumnCount(); ++i) {
            System.out.print(rs.getMetaData().getColumnName(i + 1) + "\t");
        }
        System.out.println();
        while (rs.next()) {
            for (int i = 0; i < rs.getMetaData().getColumnCount(); ++i) {
                System.out.print(rs.getObject(i + 1) + "\t");
            }
            System.out.println();
        }
    }
}

Go Driver Example

go get github.com/polardb/polardbx-connector-go

import (
    _ "github.com/polardb/polardbx-connector-go"
)

db, err := sql.Open("polardbx", "user:password@tcp(ip:port)/dbname")
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

db.SetConnMaxLifetime(time.Minute * 3)
db.SetMaxOpenConns(10)
db.SetMaxIdleConns(10)

High‑Availability Seamless Switching

PolarDB‑X combined with the connector provides HA switching without application errors. When a DBA takes a primary node offline, the driver blocks connection acquisition until the HA switch completes, ensuring ongoing transactions are not interrupted.

Recommendation: use Druid connection pool version ≥ 1.2.24 to benefit from the driver’s HA checkpoints.

MySQL Binlog Replication Compatibility

v2.4.2 adds support for MySQL‑compatible master‑slave replication. The source MySQL creates a replication user, and PolarDB‑X acts as a replica using binlog positions. Detailed steps are provided for both forward and reverse replication.

PolarDB‑X Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server

The open‑source MCP Server is designed for AI agents to interact with PolarDB‑X. It offers tools (SQL execution, cluster monitoring, command management) and resources (schema queries in JSON). It is distributed as an npm package.

# Install globally
npm install -g polardbx-mcp
# Or install locally
npm install polardbx-mcp

Configuration example (environment variables for host, port, user, password, database) is shown.

Conclusion

PolarDB‑X continues to innovate with 100 % native compatibility, multi‑region disaster recovery, support for major operating systems and chips, and security certifications. For more details, visit the official documentation and release notes.