Requirements

On Client

On the client side, e.g., on our laptop or workstation, installing the greenplum-python Python package is all we need:

python3 -m pip install greenplum-python

This installs the latest released version. To try the latest development version, we can install it with

python3 -m pip3 install git+https://github.com/greenplum-db/GreenplumPython

Please note that the Python version needs to be at least 3.9 to install.

On Server

GreenplumPython works best with Greenplum. All features will be developed and tested on Greenplum first.

We also try our best to support PostgreSQL and other PostgreSQL-derived databases, but some features might NOT be available when working with them.

Getting Started

To get started, all we need is a database that we have the permission to access.

After connecting to the database, we can create DataFrame s and manipulate them like using pandas.

Creating Functions

Even though we can call existing functions in database to manipulate DataFrames, sometimes they might not fit our needs and we need to create new UDFs.

To create a UDF, we need to install the PL/Python package on server and enable it in database with SQL:

CREATE EXTENSION plpython3u;

There are a few points to note when working with PL/Python:

• To use the extension plpython3u, it is required to login as a SUPERUSER. This might cause some security concerns. We will remove this limitation soon by supporting PL/Container.

• Python 3.x is required on server. And it is recommended that the Python version on server is greater than or equal to the one on client. This is to ensure all Python features are available when writing UDFs.

With all above steup, we are ready to go through the tutorial to see how GreenplumPython compares with SQL.

For other, more advanced, features, please refer to Requirements on Server for Advanced Features.