# Roadmap

What is done, what is planned, and where the detail lives.

This page is the entry point. The working record is
[design/ROADMAP.md](https://github.com/commandprompt/pgcolumnar/blob/main/design/ROADMAP.md),
which carries the full list with per-item history. The release schedule and the test that
gates beta 1 are in
[design/RELEASE_PLAN_1.0.md](https://github.com/commandprompt/pgcolumnar/blob/main/design/RELEASE_PLAN_1.0.md).
Issues are the authority on anything being worked now.

## Status

pgColumnar is [pre-release](limitations.md#release-status). The version marker is
`1.0-alpha3`, recorded in `VERSION`. That version is in development and not tagged; the
latest published pre-release is `v1.0-alpha2`. A table `USING pgcolumnar` is stored in the
native on-disk format, PGCN v1.

## Releases to 1.0

**An alpha may add features. Beta 1 and every release after it may not.**

That rule decides the schedule. Anything a user can see must land in an alpha.
After beta 1 the only changes are fixes, performance work that adds no surface,
documentation, and tests. A feature deferred past beta 1 waits for 2.0.

| release | target | theme |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `1.0-alpha3` | 2026-09-01 | feature complete: retention, load deduplication, sort reporting, more skipping |
| `1.0-alpha4` | 2026-09-15 | skipping and layout |
| `1.0-alpha5` | 2026-09-29 | join acceleration |
| `1.0-alpha6` | 2026-10-13 | encoding and Parquet partition inference |
| `1.0-beta1` | 2026-10-27 | feature freeze |

Dates are a cadence, not a commitment. They follow the 14 days observed between
`v1.0-alpha` and `v1.0-alpha2`, and each is the date a tag is cut.

Beta 1 is a test rather than a date. It needs a frozen on-disk format and an
upgrade path gated from every shipped version. It needs a green matrix on the tag
and documentation current against the code. And it needs every open performance
issue measured and answered. The plan linked above carries the full test.

## Done

The large pieces that have shipped:

- **Storage and scan.** Native PGCN v1 format, zone maps and bloom filters for skipping,
  column projection, vectorized execution, delete vectors.
- **Interoperability.** Arrow and Parquet, import and export, flat and nested, with no
  libarrow or libparquet dependency. External Parquet read in place, with an FDW surface,
  projection and predicate pushdown, multi-file reads and partition pruning.
- **Maintenance.** Vacuum, compaction, clustering and reclustering, projections. Retention
  through `pgcolumnar.expire`, and an optional background daemon for the online verbs.
- **Object storage.** Reads and writes over S3-compatible endpoints for the Parquet
  functions and both foreign-data wrappers, behind an endpoint allow-list that is empty by
  default.
- **Apache Iceberg.** Read a table at its current snapshot, applying row-level deletes of
  every kind, with an FDW surface and a REST catalog client.
- **Parallel bulk work.** `pgcolumnar.parallel_copy` loads one file with several background
  workers as one atomic operation, and `pgcolumnar.parallel_export_parquet` exports in
  parallel.
- **PostgreSQL integration.** Read stream and asynchronous IO, virtual generated columns,
  temporal constraints, statistics collection for the planner.

## Planned

Where an item falls in the series is in the table above; nothing here is a further
commitment. Each links to the issue that owns it.

| area | item | issue |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Planner | Join and aggregate acceleration, including runtime filters pushed into the scan | [#752](https://github.com/commandprompt/pgcolumnar/issues/752) |

Everything this table listed before has shipped: object storage reads and writes, Apache
Iceberg, the grouped parallel aggregate arm, and the join-heavy benchmark. See Done above.

## Under investigation

Recorded so the work is visible, without implying it will be built:

- Techniques from published columnar systems, ranked against what we already implement.
  See [#403](https://github.com/commandprompt/pgcolumnar/issues/403). Its companion
  reading, [#405](https://github.com/commandprompt/pgcolumnar/issues/405), is closed, and
  so is the PostgreSQL 19 and 20 survey,
  [#390](https://github.com/commandprompt/pgcolumnar/issues/390).

## What this page is not

It is not a commitment. The dates above are the cadence this project has kept, not
a promise. An item here means the work is recorded and reasoned about. It does not
mean anyone is working on it.