Key features
- PostgreSQL wire protocol compatibility — APAC apps migrate without SQL rewrites
- Multi-region APAC data residency — pin APAC rows to Singapore, Tokyo, or Seoul
- Raft consensus replication — serializable ACID transactions across APAC nodes
- Automatic failover — APAC datacenter failure recovery without manual intervention
- Geo-partitioned backups — APAC compliance-aligned backup per region
- CockroachDB Serverless — managed APAC option with consumption-based pricing
Best for
- APAC fintech teams needing multi-region PostgreSQL-compatible SQL with strong consistency — CockroachDB's multi-region APAC deployment maintains ACID guarantees that distributed NoSQL alternatives sacrifice
- APAC enterprises with data residency requirements across multiple APAC jurisdictions — REGIONAL BY ROW enables per-row APAC data placement satisfying Singapore MAS, Japan APPI, and Korea PIPA simultaneously
- APAC applications requiring PostgreSQL SQL with horizontal scale-out — CockroachDB extends PostgreSQL semantics to distributed APAC deployments without sharding complexity
Limitations to know
- ! PostgreSQL compatibility gaps — CockroachDB doesn't support all PostgreSQL extensions, stored procedures, or sequences exactly; APAC migrations from complex PostgreSQL schemas require compatibility validation
- ! Higher latency for APAC local operations — Raft consensus requires quorum acknowledgment; APAC single-region workloads pay latency overhead vs single-node PostgreSQL without multi-region benefit
- ! License change from BSL — CockroachDB changed to Business Source License in 2019; APAC SaaS teams distributing products incorporating CockroachDB must review BSL terms for their deployment model
About CockroachDB
CockroachDB is an open-source distributed SQL database with PostgreSQL wire protocol compatibility that replicates data across multiple APAC nodes using the Raft consensus algorithm — providing serializable ACID transactions across distributed APAC data, automatic failover when APAC nodes fail, and the ability to deploy data replicas in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, and Sydney simultaneously with configurable APAC data residency controls.
CockroachDB's Raft-based consistency model — where CockroachDB uses Raft consensus to replicate each APAC data range (a contiguous slice of the key space) across 3 replicas by default, ensuring that any write acknowledged to an APAC application is durably committed to a majority quorum of replicas and survives the loss of any single APAC node or datacenter without data loss — provides strong consistency guarantees that eventual-consistency distributed databases (Cassandra, DynamoDB without transactions) do not, making CockroachDB appropriate for APAC financial ledger and payment systems where data loss is not acceptable.
CockroachDB's multi-region APAC capabilities — where APAC platform teams configure `REGIONAL BY ROW` or `GLOBAL` table policies to pin APAC customer data rows to the APAC region closest to the customer (Singapore customer data stays in ap-southeast-1, Japanese customer data stays in ap-northeast-1) while maintaining cross-region consistency for APAC business operations that span regions — enables APAC enterprises to satisfy APAC data residency requirements (MAS, PDPA, APPI) for customer data while maintaining a single logically unified APAC database.
CockroachDB's PostgreSQL compatibility — where APAC applications using psycopg2, asyncpg, SQLAlchemy, or other PostgreSQL clients connect to CockroachDB using the standard PostgreSQL wire protocol, with most APAC PostgreSQL SQL syntax working without modification — enables APAC engineering teams to migrate from PostgreSQL to CockroachDB for horizontal scale-out and multi-region distribution without rewriting APAC application database code.
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