Boost your development process

Database Lab allows superfast cloning of large databases to solve the following problems:

• help build development and testing environments for development and testing involving full-size database,
• provide temporary full-size database clones for SQL query optimization (see also: Joe bot, which works on top of Database Lab),
• help verify database migrations (DB schema changes) and massive data operations.

As an example, the cloning of 10 TiB PostgreSQL database takes less than 2 seconds.

See detailed tutorial in our documentation.

Currently, there are no ready-to-use binaries or a Docker image. The setup is to be done using the source code.

1. Get the source code: git clone https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/db-lab.git.
2. Golang is required.
   • Ubuntu: In some cases, standard Ubuntu package might not work. See https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/db-lab/snippets/1918769.
   • On macOS: brew install golang
3. Clone Database Lab repo and build it:

git clone https://gitlab.com/postgres-ai/database-lab.git
cd ./database-lab
make all

./bin/dblab init --environment_id dev1 --url http://HOST --token TOKEN

Access your Database Lab instance and check its status.

./bin/dblab instance status

If the Database Lab instance is functioning normally, we will get the status code OK, and the response will have the following format:

{
  "status": {
    "code": "OK",
    "message": "Instance is ready"
  },
  ...
}

When your Database Lab instance is up and running you can use it to create thin clones, work with them, delete the existing clones, and see the list of existing clones. To create a thin clone, you need to execute a dblab clone create and fill all the required options, as illustrated below:

./bin/dblab clone create --name Clone1 --username dblab_user1 --password secret

We will get clone ID and status CREATING, we should execute consequential ./bin/dblab instance status and wait until status became OK.

{
  "id": "bo200eumq8of32ck5e2g",
  "name": "Clone1",
  "status": {
    "code": "OK",
    "message": "Clone is ready to accept connections."
  },
  "db": {
    "host": "internal_host",
    "port": "6000",
    "username": "dblab_user1"
  },
  ...
}

When the status is OK we are ready to connect to the clone's Postgres database. For example, using psql:

psql -h internal_host -p 6000 -U dblab_user1 # will ask for a password unless it's set in either PGPASSWORD or .pgpass

• Slack (English): https://postgresteam.slack.com/archives/CSXFWTD0Q
• Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/databaselabru

1. Install golangci-lint: https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint#install