Postgres Best Practices (Supabase)

Guidelines for high-performance and secure Postgres usage, specifically optimized for Supabase environments.

1. Query Performance

• •Indexes: Always index columns used in WHERE and JOIN clauses.
• •Index Types: Use B-tree for most cases, GIN for JSONB/Full-text, and Partial Indexes for filtered queries.
• •Covering Indexes: Use the INCLUDE clause to avoid table lookups for common projection columns.

2. Schema Design

• •Data Types: Choose the most compact data type (e.g., int4 instead of int8 if range allows).
• •Foreign Keys: Always index foreign key columns to speed up joins and deletions.
• •Naming: Use lowercase identifiers for maximum compatibility with various drivers and tools.

3. Connection Management

• •Pooling: Use connection pooling for all application connections to handle high concurrency.
• •Timeouts: Configure idle connection timeouts to prevent resource exhaustion.

4. Security & RLS

• •Principle of Least Privilege: Grant only necessary permissions to database roles.
• •Row Level Security (RLS): Enable RLS for multi-tenant data isolation.
• •Policy Optimization: Ensure RLS policies are performant by using indexed columns in policy conditions.

5. Data Access Patterns

• •Batching: Use batch INSERT or COPY for bulk data operations.
• •N+1 Queries: Use joins or batch loading (Prisma handles this via include or select) to eliminate N+1 issues.
• •Pagination: Prefer cursor-based pagination over OFFSET for large datasets.

6. Advanced Features

• •JSONB: Use JSONB for unstructured data and create GIN indexes for efficient querying.
• •Full-Text Search: Use tsvector and tsquery for robust search capabilities.