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Postgres-First vs Edge-First: The 2025 Deployment Dilemma

1 min read
218 words
Database Debates Postgres-First Edge-First:

The 2025 deployment dilemma isn’t about chasing the latest SQL trick; it’s about where data lives: Postgres in a shared-nothing, serverless world vs a shared-everything, bare-metal setup—and how far you push logic to the edge. [1]

Shared-Nothing vs Shared-Everything — Post 1 lays out the trade-offs: multi-tenant storage adds latency across network, compute, and S3-backed storage, trading flexibility for price on serverless; by contrast, bare-metal ties compute and storage for microsecond disk access but scales less flexibly, and provisioning is trickier. [1]

Edge-First Streaming: UnisonDBUnisonDB rethinks the WAL as the database itself, delivering sub-second fan-out to 100+ edge replicas and real-time, edge-first workflows. [2]

SQL-Defined Workflows: pgflow for Supabasepgflow lets you define flows in TypeScript, compile to SQL inserts, and let Postgres orchestrate a DAG of state machines via pgmq—all inside your Supabase project. [3]

Edge Deployments: ClientDock on Cloudflare D1ClientDock runs on Cloudflare Workers with Cloudflare D1 (SQLite at the edge). The MVP emphasizes edge-first delivery, type safety with Drizzle ORM, and modular auth. [4]

The 'Just Use Postgres' StanceJust Use Postgres is championed in a Manning post; embrace Postgres as your core—no exotic forks, just solid SQL. [5]

Bottom line: latency, scalability, and cost hinge on workload. Edge-first wins for local responsiveness; shared-everything wins at scale—choose your playground.

References

[1]
HackerNews

Debating Modern Postgres Architectures: Shared Nothing vs. Shared Everything

Compares serverless shared-nothing vs shared-everything Postgres architectures; analyzes latency, scalability, and future paths in NVMe, for OLTP/OLAP.

View source
[2]
HackerNews

Show HN: Unisondb A open source streaming multimodal database for Edge Computing

Open-source log-native database unifying persistence and streaming; WAL-based replication, multi-modal storage, edge-first design, multi-tenant isolation for real-time edge workloads everywhere.

View source
[3]
HackerNews

Show HN: pgflow – Workflows for Supabase, no external services (Postgres-first)

Introduces pgflow, a Postgres-first workflow engine for Supabase; defines DAGs in SQL, reduces boilerplate, compares to others

View source
[4]
HackerNews

Show HN: ClientDock – Client portal built on Cloudflare Workers

Uses Cloudflare D1 SQLite-at-edge, Drizzle ORM for type safety; discusses edge-first deployment, migrations, access controls, architecture tradeoffs, and real-time potential.

View source
[5]
HackerNews

Just Use Postgres

Advocates PostgreSQL; promotes using Postgres for database projects, linking to Manning book Just Use Postgres as justification

View source

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