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Rails apps use SQLite as their database by default.

This is great when you're just starting out because you don't need to install and

run a separate server process on your development machine.

Your Rails process is able to use the SQLite libraries to read and

write the database file that lives right there in your app directory.

But when it comes time to release a serious app that will have thousands of

users to production, SQLite is no longer sufficient.

Only one thing can be written to a SQLite database at the time.

Meaning slower performance if you have many users trying to save data at once.

SQLite also lacks certain features used for performance optimization.

Rails can easily be configured to work with a wide variety of other databases.

But the two that are most popular for production use are MySQL and PostgreSQL or

Postgres for short.

Which of the two is better depends on your needs, but

the general consensus seems to be.

That MySQL is easier to use while Postgres has more features and

is more compliant with the standards for SQL.

In this workshop, we're going to cover using Postgres with the Rails app.

By the way in case you're wondering where the crazy name PostgreSQL came from.

Back to the 1980s, there was a database system called Ingress which used its own

query language rather than SQL.

One of the developers split off from that project and

started work on another database.

Since it came after his work on Ingress, he called it Postgres.

It still used its own query language at that point.

When support for

SQL was added later, the name was changed to reflect that, PostgreSQL.