What it is
PostgreSQL is an open-source relational database developed by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group. It grew out of the POSTGRES project at the University of California, Berkeley. It is known for close adherence to the SQL standard, strong transactional integrity and a rich type system, and it is a common choice for systems where correctness matters most.
Beyond standard SQL it supports JSON columns, full-text search, custom types and a large set of extensions. Row-level security lets the database itself limit which rows a given user or tenant can see. It runs everywhere from a developer's laptop to managed cloud services, including Amazon RDS and Aurora, and in containers.
How I use it
- Lend Pilot's database is PostgreSQL with row-level multi-tenancy, one platform serving many lenders.
- Runs with the Node and Express API and the web app in Docker Compose on its own EC2 instance.
- Each deploy syncs, rebuilds, migrates and runs a smoke suite against production.
PostgreSQL is the right tool when the data is money and has to reconcile. Money reconciles or it does not. I chose it for Lend Pilot because loan records need strong transactions and careful tenant separation, and Postgres handles both well.
Questions
PostgreSQL or MySQL?
I run both in production. Rental Pilot is on MySQL with a database per company. Lend Pilot is on PostgreSQL with row-level multi-tenancy. Both are trusted with a ledger.
How do you keep lenders' data separate in one database?
Lend Pilot uses row-level multi-tenancy in PostgreSQL, so each lender's records are scoped to that lender.