FAQ
Does Pulse work in a serverless environment?
Pulse will natively support serverless environments soon after it launches to General Availability.
While in Early Access, Pulse works best when it is able to maintain a long-running active connection with your application. However, many serverless runtime providers limit the duration of serverless functions. We’re actively working on improving the experience in serverless applications.
Please reach out to us on the #pulse-feedback channel on our community Slack if having a more native serverless approach to getting data change events is important to you.
How does Pulse handle schema changes in the database?
Pulse is designed to work seamlessly with schema changes in your database by utilizing Change data capture (CDC) techniques, leveraging technologies like Debezium, and combining that with the power of schema-driven data access using Prisma Client. When your Prisma schema is updated, Pulse automatically adapts to the changes, ensuring that your real-time data synchronization remains consistent and reliable.
Pulse leverages the type information generated by Prisma to create type-safe database subscriptions, allowing you to catch potential issues at compile time and maintain the integrity of your data throughout the development process. This approach allows Pulse to efficiently capture and propagate data changes while maintaining compatibility with evolving database structures.
What databases are supported with Pulse?
The Pulse Early Access release supports PostgreSQL with plans to extend support to MySQL in the near future.
Pulse primarily interfaces with a database's write-ahead log (Postgres) or binlog (MySQL) to efficiently capture data change events, offering a more performant solution than regular polling through scheduled queries. Note that Pulse may not work with every Postgres-compatible database, as compatibility depends on the exposure of Postgres-native logical replication capabilities required for change data capture.
Pulse’s database compatibility list will be different from Prisma Client's database compatibility list. If you want to use Pulse with an existing Prisma application, please verify the database and hosting provider are supported by Pulse.
