Any documentation regarding the choice between CockroachDB and Postgres?

[KamilDev]

As someone new to Nakama, I could not find information in the documentation as to whether I should pick CockroachDB or Postgres. When looking in the Install Nakama with Docker Compose, we are presented the choice without any information or recommendations.

In this forum post from 2020, I see CockroachDB was the default choice for Nakama:

Why CockroachDB not PostgreSQL

Why Nakama default to use CockroachDB? Is there any customization or improvement on CockroachDB? As you mentioned on use without cockroachdb, all tests are run on CockroachDB. Is it ok to use PostgreSQL instead? I really appreciate your answer. Thanks.

However, now it’s not clear what the default or recommended choice is. I’m assuming it’s still CockroachDB but it’s not very clear.

Listing Postrgres docker file as the first choice suggests that’s the default, while in the GitHub, the CockroachDB seems to be the default (named docker-compose.yml) and Postgres appears to be the alternative (named docker-compose-postgres.yml).

In TypeScript Runtime, the example Docker file is for Postgres.

My only assumption is that it’s used due to being easier to setup.

I hope the documentation can contain some clarification on CockroachDB vs Postgres.

[sesposito]

Hello @KamilDev,

We don’t provide a recommendation because Nakama supports both - the examples mix and match for this reason as well, so we sometimes provide examples in one or the other, although parts of the docs may favor one over the other.

For local development, I’d argue that Postgres is slightly simpler given that it’s single node by default, but either will work fine.

So I think that in the end it comes down to whether you think you’ll need to take advantage of the distributed features that CRDB offers in a production setting or not vs the increased operational complexity that may come with it.

Best.