Company
Date Published
Author
Dian M Fay
Word count
1450
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

The evolution of multi-tenant data architectures in databases like Postgres has led to three main strategies: shared schema, schema-per-user, and database-per-user, each with its advantages and challenges. The database-per-user approach, while historically expensive and complex, offers complete data isolation and is becoming more feasible with advancements in cloud technologies such as Neon, which provides serverless architecture and instantly deployable projects. This approach is favored for its simplicity in security models and compliance with geographic data restrictions, albeit with higher operational costs. The series aims to explore how Neon addresses some of the traditional challenges of database-per-user designs, including the management of user databases, application environments, and the implementation of control planes to automate and streamline processes like onboarding, monitoring, and maintenance. While isolated environments provide maximum flexibility especially in dealing with issues like the noisy neighbor problem, shared environments simplify operations but may compromise on certain capabilities, highlighting a trade-off between operational complexity and flexibility.