The free and open-source relational database software PostgreSQL has now initial support for the Zstd compression algorithm. The Zstd (Zstandard) is an open-source lossless compression algorithm that is created by Yann Collet from Facebook in 2016. The algorithm is later embraced by other software and became popular.
Faster than DEFLATE
Zstd is an algorithm developed under Facebook, but it is currently open-source
Zstd has a similar compression ratio with DEFLATE; which was developed in 1991. However, Zstd is faster than DEFLATE, especially for decompression. It has 30 levels for compression/speed balance and it supports multi-thread compression and decompression. Its maximum compression option has similar results with lzma, lzham, and ppmx algorithms.
The initial support came as a result of a discussion in the developer team. Currently, it is possible to use –with-zstd as a build-time option. However, there is no actual usage of it in PostgreSQL yet. The actual implementation of Zstd should be arriving with the PostgreSQL 15 and it is set planned to be released in the third quarter of 2022.