lo extension for Postgres

Question

Hello,
I have a question concerning the Azure Postgres Single Server (but it may effect the other Postgres Products like Flexible Server too). Why can't I install the lo module? If I try to install it, I see this error from the server: "extension lo is not supported by Azure Database for PostgreSQL". Ok, that's expected, because lo is not in the list of Azure supported extensions. But why? We use large objects in our Java application. For us the preferred option to free formally created blobs is to use the lo_manage function from the lo module (see this suggestion). But we can't use it, because it is not supported by Azure. So our DB is growing more and more and we only can manage this by running vacuum again and again (manually or as a cron job) which seems not to be the intended way. Do you have a solution for our problem? How do other customers solve this problem?
Thanks for your help,
Kind regards,
Jana

Answer 1

Hi, @Jana Storch (DPDHL IT Services) Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform, and thanks for your query.
As we understand you want to know why the io extension is not supported for a single server.

We support lo extension in Flexible Server. No plans to add support in Single Server. If lo extension is required, we recommend migrating to Flexible Server.

We usually consider extensions based on a number of customers asking for it – which we did not get enough requests for this extension. Besides, we prioritized our work on enabling Flexible Server and hence we support there.

Please let me know if you need any additional information.

Regards
Geetha