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Roadmap

This roadmap outlines the planned development of Alopex DB from the current state to production readiness.

Current Status

alopex-cli v0.4.2 Released (January 2026)

alopex-cli v0.4.2 with TUI as default is complete. All commands now support TUI mode, Admin TUI for lifecycle operations, mTLS certificate validation, and SELECT literal support (without FROM clause).

v0.4.0 Complete — Published on crates.io & PyPI (January 2026)

Alopex DB v0.4.0 with Server Mode + Async/Stream + DataFrame is complete. HTTP/gRPC API, runtime-agnostic async facade, streaming SELECT, and Polars-compatible DataFrame foundation are ready for use.

# Rust
cargo add alopex-embedded alopex-sql alopex-server

# Python
pip install alopex

Timeline

gantt
    title Alopex DB Development Timeline
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM
    axisFormat  %Y-%m

    section Foundation
    v0.1-v0.2 Core          :done, 2025-01, 2025-10
    v0.3 SQL + HNSW         :done, 2025-10, 2025-12
    v0.3.3 Python + CLI     :done, 2025-12, 2025-12

    section Server & DataFrame
    v0.4 Server + DataFrame :done, 2026-01, 2026-01

    section Production
    v0.5 Durability + JOIN  :2026-04, 2026-06
    v0.6 WASM Viewer        :2026-06, 2026-08

    section Distributed
    v0.7 Cluster-aware      :2026-08, 2026-10
    v0.8 Metadata Raft      :2026-10, 2026-12
    v0.9 Multi-Raft         :2027-01, 2027-02

    section GA
    v0.10 Hardening         :2027-02, 2027-03
    v1.0 GA                 :milestone, 2027-03, 0d

Published Crates

The following crates are available on crates.io:

Crate Version Description
alopex-embedded v0.4.0 Embedded database API
alopex-sql v0.4.0 SQL parser, planner, executor
alopex-core v0.4.0 Core storage engine
alopex-server v0.4.0 HTTP/gRPC server
alopex-chirps v0.5.0 Cluster messaging layer

Version Compatibility Matrix

Alopex DB alopex-core alopex-dataframe alopex-sql alopex-embedded alopex-py Chirps
v0.3 v0.3.0 - v0.3.0 v0.3.0 - v0.5.0
v0.3.3 v0.3.3 - v0.3.0 v0.3.3 v0.3.3 v0.5.0
v0.4.0 v0.4.0 v0.1.0 v0.4.0 v0.4.0 v0.4.0 v0.5.0
v0.4.2 v0.4.0 v0.1.0 v0.4.0 v0.4.0 v0.4.0 v0.5.0
v0.5 v0.5 v0.2.0 v0.5 v0.5 - v0.5.0
v0.6 v0.6 v0.3.0 v0.6 v0.6 - v0.5.0
v0.7 v0.7 v0.4.0 v0.7+ v0.7 - v0.5+
v1.0 v1.0 v1.0 v1.0 v1.0 - v0.8

alopex-py Independent Versioning

alopex-py follows its own versioning scheme independent of the Rust workspace. See alopex-py Roadmap for details.


Phase 1: Foundation (v0.1 - v0.2)

Status: Complete

v0.1 — Embedded KV Core

  • LSM-Tree storage engine
  • Write-Ahead Log (WAL) with crash recovery
  • Key-Value API (open/put/get/delete)
  • Transactions (begin/commit/rollback)
  • MVCC with Snapshot Isolation

v0.2 — Vector Core + Columnar

  • Vector type (VECTOR(dimension))
  • Flat search (cosine, L2, inner product)
  • Columnar segment storage with compression
  • In-memory mode support
  • Vector delete/compaction

Phase 2: SQL & HNSW (v0.3)

Status: Complete — crates.io Published

v0.3 — SQL Frontend + HNSW Index

The first public release on crates.io with full SQL support and HNSW indexing.

Completed Features

  • SQL Parser (DDL: CREATE/DROP TABLE/INDEX, DML: SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE)
  • Query Planner with Catalog and LogicalPlan
  • SQL Executor (iterator-based execution)
  • vector_similarity() function with Top-K optimization
  • HNSW Index for high-performance similarity search
  • Columnar COPY/Bulk Load (Parquet/CSV → ColumnarSegment)
  • Embedded Integration (Database::execute_sql, Transaction::execute_sql)

SQL Examples

-- Create table with vector column
CREATE TABLE documents (
    id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
    content TEXT,
    embedding VECTOR(1536)
);

-- Insert with vector
INSERT INTO documents (id, content, embedding)
VALUES (1, 'Hello world', [0.1, 0.2, ...]);

-- Hybrid search with vector similarity
SELECT id, content, vector_similarity(embedding, ?) AS score
FROM documents
ORDER BY score DESC
LIMIT 10;

-- Create HNSW index
CREATE INDEX idx_emb ON documents USING HNSW (embedding);

Phase 3: Python & Server (v0.3.3 - v0.4)

v0.3.3 — Python Wrapper (alopex-py)

Status: Complete — PyPI Published Released: December 2025

Python bindings via PyO3 for the embedded database.

Features

  • PyO3 module structure with error handling
  • Database / Transaction bindings
  • SQL API bindings (execute_sql, QueryResult)
  • Type stubs (.pyi files) for IDE support
  • CI/CD with maturin + pytest + TestPyPI verification
  • Vector/HNSW API bindings — planned for v0.3.4
  • NumPy integration (zero-copy arrays) — planned for v0.3.5

Preview

import alopex

# Open database
db = alopex.Database.open("./my_data")

# Execute SQL
results = db.execute_sql(
    "SELECT * FROM docs WHERE vector_similarity(embedding, ?) > 0.8",
    [query_embedding]
)

# HNSW search
similar = db.search_hnsw("docs", query_embedding, k=10)
for doc_id, score in similar:
    print(f"{doc_id}: {score:.4f}")

v0.4.0 — Server Mode + DataFrame

Status: Complete — crates.io Published Released: January 2026

Standalone server and Polars-compatible DataFrame API foundation.

Server Features

  • alopex-server binary with HTTP/gRPC API
  • SQL API (DDL/DML/SELECT with streaming)
  • Vector API (HNSW/Flat search)
  • Session Manager with TLS support
  • Observability (metrics, tracing)
  • Runtime-agnostic async facade with tokio adapter

DataFrame Features (alopex-dataframe v0.1.0)

  • DataFrame / LazyFrame / Expr types
  • I/O: read_csv, read_parquet, scan_* variants
  • Operations: select, filter, with_columns
  • Aggregations: group_by, agg, sum, mean, etc.
  • Lazy evaluation with query optimization
  • Predicate/Projection Pushdown

DataFrame Preview

use alopex_dataframe::{DataFrame, col, lit};

let df = DataFrame::read_parquet("data.parquet")?;

let result = df
    .lazy()
    .filter(col("score").gt(lit(0.5)))
    .select([col("id"), col("content")])
    .collect()?;

Phase 4: Durability & WASM (v0.5 - v0.6)

v0.5 — Durability + JOIN

Status: Planned Target: Q2 2026

  • WAL/Crash recovery hardening
  • Backup and restore
  • JOIN support (inner, left, right, full)
  • GROUP BY / Aggregation
  • Prometheus metrics
  • Structured logging

v0.6 — WASM Viewer

Status: Planned Target: Q3 2026

Browser-based read-only viewer for database snapshots.

  • wasm32-unknown-unknown target
  • Pre-built SSTable loader
  • IndexedDB caching
  • SQL SELECT only
  • Vector Search (Flat only)
  • npm package (@alopex-db/wasm)
import { AlopexViewer } from '@alopex-db/wasm';

const viewer = await AlopexViewer.loadSnapshot('/data/snapshot.alopex');
const results = await viewer.query('SELECT * FROM products LIMIT 10');

Phase 5: Distributed (v0.7 - v0.9)

v0.7 — Cluster-Aware

Status: Planned Target: Q4 2026 Depends on: Chirps v0.3

  • alopex-cluster module
  • Chirps membership integration
  • Node discovery and events
  • Logical sharding design

v0.8 — Metadata Raft

Status: Planned Target: Q4 2026 Depends on: Chirps v0.6

  • Metadata Raft Group
  • MultiRaftManager integration
  • Shard/range metadata management

v0.9 — Multi-Raft + CRDT

Status: Planned Target: Q1 2027 Depends on: Chirps v0.7

  • Multi-Raft (range partitioning)
  • CRDT (Counter, Set for eventual consistency)
  • Changefeed via Durable profile
  • Distributed transactions

Phase 6: Production (v0.10 - v1.0)

v0.10 — Hardening

Status: Planned Target: Q1 2027

  • Single-node regression suite
  • Cluster consistency tests
  • Partition/recovery tests
  • Configuration freeze
  • API stability guarantee

v1.0 — General Availability

Status: Planned Target: Q1 2027

  • 3-10 node production support
  • Rolling upgrades
  • Complete documentation
  • API/ABI compatibility tests
  • Federation support

Chirps Roadmap

Alopex Chirps (cluster messaging layer) has its own development track:

Version Status Features
v0.1-v0.3 ✅ Complete Gossip, SWIM, Membership API
v0.4 ✅ Complete Raft-ready transport, QoS streams
v0.5 ✅ Complete Raft Consensus API, WalRaftStorage
v0.5.1 Planned File Transfer API
v0.6 Planned Multi-Raft, TSO, Observability
v0.7+ Planned IggyBackend, Durable profile

alopex-dataframe Roadmap

Polars-compatible DataFrame engine in pure Rust:

Version Phase Features
v0.1.0 DF-0 DataFrame/Series types, Arrow integration
v0.2.0 DF-1 CSV/Parquet I/O, select/filter/group_by, LazyFrame
v0.3.0 DF-2 JOIN, sort, fill_null, Predicate Pushdown
v0.4.0 DF-3 Window functions, pivot/unpivot, str/dt namespaces

alopex-py Roadmap

Python bindings with NumPy and DataFrame support. alopex-py follows its own versioning scheme independent of the Rust workspace.

Version Phase Features Status
v0.3.3 Phase 1 Database/Transaction/SQL basic API ✅ PyPI Published
v0.3.4 Phase 1+ Vector/HNSW API extensions Planned
v0.3.5 Phase 1+ NumPy integration (zero-copy arrays) Planned
v0.4.0 Phase 1+ Catalog API (Polars Unity Catalog compatible) Planned
v0.5.0 Phase 2 DataFrame API MVP (via alopex-dataframe) Planned
v0.6.0 Phase 2 DataFrame extended features Planned
v0.7.0 Phase 3 Client API (Server connection) Planned

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Priority areas:

Area Priority Difficulty
Documentation High Easy
Test coverage High Medium
Python bindings High Medium
DataFrame operations Medium Medium
SQL parser extensions Medium Hard
Vector search optimizations Medium Hard

Contributing Guide


Changelog

Recent Updates

  • 2026-01-24: alopex-cli v0.4.2 released — TUI default, Admin TUI, security fixes, SELECT literal support
  • 2026-01-14: v0.4.0 Server + DataFrame published on crates.io
  • 2025-12-27: v0.3.3 alopex-py published on PyPI
  • 2025-12: v0.3 SQL Frontend + HNSW published on crates.io
  • 2025-11: HNSW index implementation complete
  • 2025-10: alopex-sql Parser/Planner/Executor complete
  • 2025-09: Columnar-based Vector Store complete
  • 2025-08: LSM-Tree file mode complete
  • 2025-06: In-memory mode complete
  • 2025-01: Project started

For detailed changes, see the GitHub Releases.