The Ideal Database for AI Agents Doesn't Exist Yet, Says Percona CEO
The Register, Friday, September 18th, 2026
Iteration-heavy agent workloads caught database vendors off guard, and requirements for a purpose-built engine remain unclear.
Percona CEO Peter Farkas argues AI caught the database industry off guard and that agentic workloads may eventually need a new kind of database, once anyone works out what those workloads actually require.
He points to iteration-focused patterns in which an agent might make 150 attempts before a person or another system picks the best result, something no human workflow would produce. Of today's options he says plainly that they are not the best we can have, just what exists right now.
MySQL and PostgreSQL are mature and stable, which suits the conservative world of database administration, but they were not designed around these access patterns. His practical advice is to pick technology that can handle the workload today without assuming that choice will remain the right fit.