A First Look at Neon: A Postgres Database That Branches

Neon is an innovative, open-source alternative to traditional relational databases such as AWS Aurora or Google's Cloud SQL for Postgres, offering a serverless, scalable implementation of PostgreSQL. Launched in June 2021, Neon leverages a unique architecture that separates compute and storage layers, with the compute layer running stateless PostgreSQL on Kubernetes and the storage layer handling transactions and data persistence. A standout feature of Neon is its branching capability, which allows for the creation of writable branches similar to Git, facilitating experimentation, database migration testing, and analytics without affecting the main database. Although currently in a free technical preview with limitations like a single project per user and a branch size cap of 3GB, it provides unprecedented flexibility in database management. Neon's branching functionality offers significant potential for development and database management, as it allows developers to perform tasks such as automated testing and safe migration in isolated environments, a capability not easily achievable in traditional database engines.