AWS RDS Postgres Setup Guide

Overview

Amazon RDS provides managed PostgreSQL (or Aurora PostgreSQL) instances. PostgreSQL is an alternative to MySQL for projects requiring advanced SQL features, JSON support, or PostGIS.

Instance Configuration

Setting	Sandbox	Production
Engine	PostgreSQL 16+ or Aurora PostgreSQL	Aurora PostgreSQL (recommended)
Template	Free Tier or Dev/Test	Production
Instance Class	db.t3.micro or db.t4g.micro	Based on workload
Storage	20 GB General Purpose SSD	Auto-scaling
Multi-AZ	No	Yes
Public Access	Yes (if Lambda outside VPC)	Depends on architecture

Database User Strategy

User	Privileges	Used By
Admin (master)	Full control	Database administration
Application user	SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE on application schema	Lambda functions
Read-only user	SELECT only	Reporting, monitoring

Local Development

The framework's Docker Compose provides a local Postgres instance:

docker compose -f docs/dev/docker-compose.yml up postgres -d

Default local credentials:

• Host: localhost:5432
• Database: app_dev
• User: dev_user
• Password: dev_password

Administration Tools

• pgAdmin (GUI)
• DBeaver (cross-database GUI)
• psql CLI

Security

• Create dedicated application users with minimal privileges
• Enforce SSL connections in production
• Store all credentials in SSM Parameter Store, actual values in __dev__/secrets/