PgLite - Bring PostgreSQL to the Browser
Friday, June 26 at 13:00–13:50
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Andrea Minetti is a Developer and Database Architect from Ticino, Switzerland. Works for the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL, part of the ETH Domain where he develops the open-source project BOX framework. His background is in Web development but over the past seven years, he has had the opportunity to work and study extensively PostgreSQL, which quickly became one of his main areas of interest.
What if you could run a full-featured PostgreSQL instance directly in the browser?
Enter PgLite—a project that brings PostgreSQL's capabilities to client-side applications. In this talk, we'll explore how PgLite works, why it matters, and how it's opening entirely new possibilities for developers.
We'll begin by understanding the technical architecture behind PgLite—how PostgreSQL has been compiled to WebAssembly, enabling it to run in modern browsers without server dependencies. We'll examine the performance characteristics, limitations, supported extensions, and surprising capabilities of in-browser PostgreSQL instances.
Beyond the technical details, we'll explore practical use cases of PgLite: building offline-first applications that seamlessly sync when connectivity returns, how it could be used to teach PostgreSQL fundamentals without requiring server infrastructure.
We'll also discuss real-world challenges—data persistence, storage limitations, common pitfalls—and share strategies for overcoming them.
