How Suning Scaled PostgreSQL to 4,000+ Instances for Smart Retail

PostgresConf.CN & PGConf.Asia 2020, the annual open‑source relational‑database ecosystem conference, was held online from November 17‑20. The Chinese edition of PostgresConf is part of the global series and, since its launch in 2017, has become the largest PG‑focused event in China.

In 2020 PGConf.Asia was held in China for the first time, co‑organized with PostgresConf.CN by the China Open‑Source Software Alliance PG branch. Suning Technology Group’s architecture expert Chen Huajun delivered a keynote titled “PostgreSQL in Suning’s Application and Practice”, sharing the background, implementation process, deployment architecture and lessons learned.

PostgreSQL, an open‑source, feature‑rich relational database, is increasingly favored by enterprises seeking autonomous, controllable solutions. Since Suning adopted PostgreSQL in 2017, it has successfully deployed more than 4,000 instances across multiple business lines. Replacing numerous commercial databases has dramatically reduced costs while the database’s advanced capabilities fully support Suning’s end‑to‑end smart‑retail strategy.

Suning’s production environment now leverages advanced PostgreSQL features such as the Citus distributed HTAP cluster, the native JSON data type, PostGIS for geospatial applications, and roaringbitmap for storing and computing user‑profile tags. These capabilities are applied to billing and settlement, reporting analytics, location‑based search and recommendation, user profiling, as well as UV, retention and churn analysis.

Interested readers can watch the full presentation video.