Question

I’ve built an app on heroku and we’re getting close to going live. Right now I’m using the ‘Shared Database 5MB’ add-on and I can’t find where to change to the production DB.

What other changes should I apply before going live? Is there a good tutorial on heroku or elsewhere? I couldn’t find one yet.

Answer 1

Here you can find information about Production vs Development database plans.

Development vs. Production

Heroku offers you the choice of running a development or production
database.

Heroku Postgres Dev databases

The Heroku Postgres dev plan has replaced the older shared database
system. It runs Postgres 9.1 and offers almost complete feature parity
with the production plans, but is intended for development and staging
application.

Most new apps created on Heroku automatically have a dev database
installed. See the troubleshooting section if DATABASE_URL is not
defined in your app.

For more information read the Heroku Postgres Starter Tier article.

Heroku Postgres production databases

Production plans are suitable for production scale applications. In
addition, the production databases offer a number of advantages over
shared, including direct access (via psql or any native postgres
library), stored procedures, and Postgres 9.1 support.