We [Bluesky] took a somewhat novel approach of giving every user their own SQLite database. By removing the Postgres dependency, we made it possible to run a ‘PDS in a box’ [Personal Data Server] without having to worry about managing a database. We didn’t have to worry about things like replicas or failover. For those thinking this is irresponsible: don’t worry, we are backing up all the data on our PDSs!
SQLite worked really well because the PDS – in its ideal form – is a single-tenant system. We owned up to that by having these single tenant SQLite databases.
Recent articles
- Highlights from my appearance on the Data Renegades podcast with CL Kao and Dori Wilson - 26th November 2025
- Claude Opus 4.5, and why evaluating new LLMs is increasingly difficult - 24th November 2025
- sqlite-utils 4.0a1 has several (minor) backwards incompatible changes - 24th November 2025