Jump to content

This is a read-only backup copy of Wikitech. The live site can be found at wikitech.wikimedia.org

News/2025 Wikidata term store database split

From Wikitech

This page contains information about the split of Wikidata term store tables to the new x3 database cluster .

What is changing?

Tables holding Wikidata's term store ( wbt_* ) are being split to a new separate database cluster . Tools querying those tables via the wiki replicas must be adapted to connect to the new cluster instead.

Timeline

  • Yes Done 2025-04-24: New hostnames announced and ready for use.
  • Yes Done 2025-05-28: The x3 section is split and MediaWiki is changed to write there. The tables on the old s8 cluster will no longer be updated and will eventually be dropped.
  • Yes Done 2025-06-04: x3 is set up on the Wiki Replicas as a separate section. Queries will start returning up-to-date information again, but no longer have access to s8 tables.
  • Yes Done 2025-07-08: The old tables in the s8 cluster were dropped from Wiki Replicas.

What should I do?

If you maintain a tool that queries the Wikidata term store tables ( wbt_* ), you need to update your code to connect to a separate database cluster for those:

Old hostname New hostname
wikidatawiki.analytics.db.svc.wikimedia.cloud termstore.wikidatawiki.analytics.db.svc.wikimedia.cloud
wikidatawiki.web.db.svc.wikimedia.cloud termstore.wikidatawiki.web.db.svc.wikimedia.cloud

In addition, any code performing JOINs between those tables and other wikidatawiki will need to be changed to perform the same operations in code instead.

Alternatively, you may be able to change your code to read terms from a different, more stable source, such as the wbgetentities API (potentially with the languages= and languagefallback= parameters) or the wbformatentities API. These APIs will keep working even if further changes to the term store in the database are necessary in future.

Why are we doing this?

Wikidata's database has been growing too fast, and so this change is necessary to allow growth and to improve Wikidata's performance.

See also

Communication and support

Support and administration of the WMCS resources is provided by Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedia movement volunteers. Please reach out with questions and join the conversation:

Discuss and receive general support
  • Chat in real time in the IRC channel #wikimedia-cloud connect or the bridged Telegram group
  • Discuss via email after you have subscribed to the cloud@ mailing list
Stay aware of critical changes and plans
Track work tasks and report bugs

Use a subproject of the #Cloud-Services Phabricator project to track confirmed bug reports and feature requests about the Cloud Services infrastructure itself

Read stories and WMCS blog posts

Read posts about Cloud Services on the Wikimedia Technical Blog . (Older posts can be read from the Cloud Services Blog .)

Retrieved from " https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=News/2025_Wikidata_term_store_database_split&oldid=2321341 "