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Why not just run a local Postgres instance?

question 2 connections

Audience question: wouldn't running Postgres on the same machine save most of the headaches and avoid the migration? Wrona: even same-machine Postgres has serialization and socket overhead versus an in-process SQLite (so N+1s still cost more), you still have to manage connection pooling and Postgres operations, and SQLite is purpose-built for embedding. Also, the migration took only ~3 days of one person's work and is fully reversible.

answer_summary
Even local Postgres still has IPC overhead, connection-pool management and more ops work; SQLite is purpose-built for embedding and the migration was cheap and reversible.
question Why not just run a local Postgres instance?
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PostgreSQL tool
Compares running Postgres locally versus embedded SQLite.
question Why not just run a local Postgres instance?
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From PostgreSQL to SQLite in Rails talk
Audience Q&A.

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Created in
From PostgreSQL to SQLite in Rails — Wojtek Wrona at wroc... 2026-04-18 06:46