Installation via Docker

Try Online

If you want to avoid running your own XTDB server locally, you can instantly play with inserting data and querying right now using the XTDB Play web-based console. The interactive SQL Quickstart uses this console to showcase XTDB’s SQL dialect and bitemporal capabilities.

Otherwise, let’s get XTDB downloaded and running on your own machine…​

Docker Install

XTDB supports production usage via the Postgres wire protocol so that you can work with various Postgres-compatible tools, drivers etc.

You can start a ‘standalone’ (i.e. non-production, non-distributed) XTDB server using the following command:

## see https://github.com/xtdb/xtdb/pkgs/container/xtdb/versions for tags
## `latest`: latest tagged release
## `nightly`: built every night from `main` branch
## `edge`: latest nightly plus urgent fixes

docker run -it --pull=always \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  ghcr.io/xtdb/xtdb

## 5432: Postgres wire-compatible server (primary API)
## 8080: Monitoring/healthz HTTP endpoints

This command starts a Postgres wire-compatible endpoint on port 5432.

By default your data will only be stored temporarily using a local directory within the Docker container.

(Optional) Mount a host directory

You can attach a host volume to preserve your data across container restarts, e.g. by adding -v /tmp/xtdb-data-dir:/var/lib/xtdb, however because the XTDB container runs as a non-root user by default (UID 20000), you must ensure the container can write to it:

• For Docker, before running the container:

  sudo chown -R 20000:20000 /tmp/xtdb-data-dir

• For Podman, ensure the directory is owned by your user and use --userns=keep-id, e.g.:

  podman run -it --pull=always \
    --userns=keep-id \
    -p 5432:5432 \
    -p 8080:8080 \
    -v /tmp/xtdb-data-dir:/var/lib/xtdb \
    ghcr.io/xtdb/xtdb

Wait for XTDB to start

After seeing a ‘Node started’ log message (e.g. 09:00:00 | INFO xtdb.cli | Node started) you are able to confirm your XTDB server is running using cURL:

curl http://localhost:8080/healthz/alive

## Alive.

Connect with psql

## if you have Postgres installed, psql is already available
psql -h localhost -U xtdb xtdb

Run your first query

psql (16.2, server 16)
Type "help" for help.

user=> SELECT 'foo' AS bar;

 bar
-----
 foo
(1 row)

Next up:

• if you haven’t already run through the Quickstart already, you probably want to start there with inserting data, running your first queries, and learning about XTDB’s novel capabilities: let’s INSERT some data!
• to connect to XTDB from your language/tool of choice, have a look at XTDB’s driver support.