Schema Design tools
Design and validate PostgreSQL schemas
A well-designed schema is the foundation of every performant PostgreSQL application. Decisions made during schema design — normalization level, data types, constraint placement, partitioning strategy — are expensive to change after tables contain millions of rows and applications depend on the structure.
PostgreSQL offers a rich type system that goes far beyond standard SQL: domains for validated types, composite types, arrays, JSONB for semi-structured data, range types for temporal data, and enums for categorical values. Choosing the right type eliminates entire classes of bugs at the database level. For example, using timestamptz instead of timestamp prevents timezone-related data corruption, and using uuid for primary keys simplifies distributed systems and prevents enumeration attacks.
These tools help you design schemas from requirements, validate existing designs against PostgreSQL best practices, and plan safe migrations. The AI assistant understands trade-offs between normalized and denormalized designs, when to use table inheritance versus partitioning, and how to structure schemas for both transactional workloads and analytical queries.
Common problems
- Using `timestamp` instead of `timestamptz`, causing timezone bugs
- Missing foreign key indexes leading to slow cascading deletes
- Over-normalization causing excessive joins in read-heavy workloads
- Choosing serial IDs when UUIDs would be more appropriate for distributed systems
- Not planning for schema migrations on large tables with zero downtime