Glossary
Words used on this site. One sentence each.
Product
- Agent
- Software that acts on its own: it opens sessions, writes data, and retries.
- PostgreSQL
- The database most apps already use. Compatible means you keep the same queries and tools.
- Open stack
- The usual self-hosted mix we compared against: Postgres plus extra services for login, files, and search.
- Li
- The language Librebase is written in. It compiles to one small native program.
- Instance
- One running copy of the database. Dedicated is yours alone. Shared means several projects on one copy.
- Tenant isolation
- Keeping each customer’s data separate so they cannot see each other.
Size and speed
- Idle memory
- RAM used while the system is waiting, not serving traffic. Lower means more projects fit on one machine.
- RAM
- How much memory the process is actually using on the computer.
- Service / container
- A packaged copy of the software you have to start and keep running.
- Time until ready
- How long from launch until the system answers that it is ready. Lower is better.
- Latency
- How long one request takes. Lower is better.
- Write speed
- How fast new rows can be written in bulk. Higher rows per second is better.
Search
- QPS
- Queries per second — how many lookups finish in one second. Higher is better.
- Vector search
- Finding similar items by meaning (a photo, a sentence), not by exact text.
- Accuracy / recall
- How often search returns the correct match. 100% means it did not miss on this test.
- Search setting (ef)
- A knob on the search index. Higher looks at more candidates — slower, sometimes more accurate.
- HNSW
- A shortcut for finding similar items fast, instead of checking every item.
- pgvector
- The usual Postgres add-on for similar-item search. What the open stack used here.
Sign-in and APIs
- Sign-in
- Creating accounts and logging people in. Included in Librebase instead of a separate product.
- Row rules
- Who may read or write which record.
- HTTP API
- The web interface apps use to read and write data.
- Assistant hooks
- A standard way for AI tools to create a project, check health, or run a query without a person clicking.
- Live updates
- Pushing changes to connected clients, such as a chat or a live dashboard.
- Storage
- Saving and fetching files through the same platform.
- Temporary download link
- A short-lived link to a file that does not stay public forever.
- Small programs
- Short programs that run next to the data. Also called edge functions.