What Is Branch Preview Database?
A branch preview database is an isolated PostgreSQL environment created from a source branch to validate schema changes, migrations, and query behavior before production rollout.
Why It Matters for PostgreSQL Performance
In PostgreSQL performance work, branch preview databases reduce release risk by testing query and migration behavior in isolated environments.
Practical Benchmarking Context
When benchmarking with pgbench, run the same scripts against the preview branch and main branch to detect regressions before deployment.
Use this term together with workload shape, concurrency level, and scale factor when interpreting pgbench outputs. Isolated values can be misleading without full run context.
Example
Example: Create a preview branch for every pull request and run migrations plus pgbench smoke tests before merge.