Databases: Postgres and Supabase
Where your data lives. Learn Postgres once and every product you build gets easier.
Create a free Supabase project and make one table with five fake rows.
Your learning checklist
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Learn SQL by doing
Every AI-built app ends up asking a database questions; you need to read the SQL the agent writes.
courseSQLBolt
Short interactive lessons from SELECT to joins; the fastest free start.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
coursePostgreSQL Exercises
Practice questions on one dataset, from basic queries to recursive ones.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
courseCS50's Introduction to Databases with SQL
A seven-week Harvard course on table design, joins, views and indexes.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
Understand Postgres itself
Postgres is the database underneath Supabase and most hosted options, so learn its rules once.
docsPostgreSQL documentation: Tutorial
The official hands-on intro to relational concepts and SQL.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
articleUse The Index, Luke
Free guide to indexes and query speed; read it when a page or report gets slow.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
Start a Supabase project
Supabase wraps Postgres with auth, an API and storage so you can build without running servers.
docsSupabase Database overview
What you get with a project and how to access it.
- Cost / access
- free tier
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docsUse Supabase with Next.js
Step-by-step: read sample data from Supabase in a Next.js app.
- Cost / access
- free tier
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docsSupabase CLI and local development
Run the stack on your own machine and link it to a hosted project so you can test before touching real data.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
Lock it down with auth and row level security
This is the step people skip and regret: without row level security anyone with your public key may read or change rows. Turn it on for every table.
docsSupabase: Row Level Security
Grants, per-operation policies and pgTAP tests, explained for Supabase.
- Cost / access
- free tier
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docsPostgreSQL: Row Security Policies
The underlying Postgres feature, so you understand what Supabase is doing.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docsSupabase Auth
Users and sign-in methods; policies refer to the signed-in user.
- Cost / access
- free tier
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
Change your schema safely with migrations
A migration is a saved, replayable schema change. It lets you recreate a database and avoids hand-editing production.
docsSupabase: Deploy database migrations
Create migrations locally, seed data, deploy to a live project and fix sync errors.
- Cost / access
- free tier
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docsDrizzle ORM: Migrations
If you define your schema in TypeScript, this is the migration workflow for it.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
Set up backups and test a restore
A backup you have never restored is a guess. Note that Supabase says free-tier projects do not get automatic daily backups, so export your own.
docsSupabase: Database Backups
Daily backups, Point-in-Time Recovery and the db dump command; free projects need their own exports.
- Cost / access
- free tier
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docspg_dump (PostgreSQL docs)
The standard tool for exporting a database to a file you can restore elsewhere.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docsPostgreSQL: Backup and Restore
The three backup approaches (SQL dump, file-system backup, continuous archiving) and when each fits.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
Run the pre-launch checks
Before real customer data goes in, walk the official checklists for security, performance and uptime.
docsSupabase Production Checklist
Verify security, load and availability before public launch.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
docsSecure configuration of Supabase products
Hardening guides for Auth, Database, Storage and Realtime.
- Cost / access
- free · Service usage, hosting, or model access may be separate.
- Setup
- Follow the linked provider’s current instructions; check account and runtime requirements.
You have made a start when…
- You can design a table and write a query that joins two.
- Row level security is on for anything private.
- You have a backup and know how to restore it.
Take this into your assistant.
Additional curriculum comes from the supplied AI Frontiers playbooks. Resource descriptions and cost labels are source guidance, not a fresh verification of pricing, compatibility, or results. Open the official instructions before using a tool. Checklist marks are your own progress notes.