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

• Done 2025-04-24: New hostnames announced and ready for use.
• 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.
• 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.

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:

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

• Help:Wiki Replicas
• [Wikitech-l] Re: Several database changes happening in the coming months

Communication and support

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