Citus Blog

We talk with a lot of SaaS companies that are encountering issues with their database. The most common issue we discuss relates to performance, either a need to keep scaling or at times just dealing with really intensive data needs of only a few customers and how to handle that.

And then as you continue to scale and capture more data you want to provide more value back to your customers.

At times you might even consider giving raw SQL access to your largest and most important customres. Typically controlling what data you give them, via dashboards and canned reports is ideal–this way you can control performance impact and other risks. But, if you have extra large/important customers that require you to give them raw access to the data... then PostgreSQL and thus Citus has your answer.

Pro-tip: Don't grant access to *all** of your customers.*

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Data has a certain gravity and inertia. Once it's stored it's not likely to be actively moved or frequently modified. At least not for your one source of truth. Protecting that data and ensuring it's both safely stored but also correct is worth the time investment because of the value it has.

Going further, your database schema and models are going to change far less than your application code. Because it changes less frequently the case can easily be made that spending some time to ensure correctness at the database level is a great return on time.

This post was the result of a recent talk I recently gave at PgDay Paris. The conference itself was a great local event in Paris, and while there we had a chance to meet with a few of our customers based in Paris as well. As it’s always great to get out in person and chat with people about Postgres and their experience in scaling their database, many remarked that the talk could be useful to others that weren’t there. So as I thought it would be worthwhile to write-up, and here you go:

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