Question

Connection pools through DigitalOcean managed database cluster or through node-postgres on Next.js web application

Prior to setting up my DigitalOcean managed database cluster I was just using a local PostgreSQL database. I was using the node-postgres (https://node-postgres.com/) package to create a connection pool. I would create one connection pool instance and import that instance into my serverless functions to query the database. However, with the DigitalOcean managed database cluster it is recommended to use the built-in connection pool tool (which uses PgBouncer according to documentation). My question is if I use the DigitalOcean connection pool should I not use a connection pool through node-postgres? Currently I have a connection pool set up through node-postgres in my Next.js web application and a connection pool set up through DigitalOcean. I am not sure if this “double pooling” is bad practice or will cause issues. Thanks and let me know if I need to provide more info.


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Hi there,

Indeed you are right, I don’t think that it is necessary to have double pooling. It would be a matter of a personal preference on weather you want to use the managed PgBouncer or the node-postgres pool.

Personally, depending on the project of course, if it was a PgBouncer instance that I had to manage myself I would probably default to the node-postgres pool, just so that I don’t have an extra service to manage. However as the PgBouncer is part of the Postgres Managed Cluster, it should not add extra operational burden.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you are using the App Platform, is that at the moment unfortunately using Trusted Sources with App Platform and PostgreSQL connection pools is not supported. So if you are using the App Platform that might be a blocker, so you might have to default to node-postgres.

Hope that this helps!

Best,

Bobby

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