Per-User Database Architecture with Xata, Clerk Webhooks, Hookdeck, and Next.js
When building an application you often think of having a database with a table named users and then throughout your database schema you have references to users for the owner of a row in each referencing table. This works in many cases. However, in addition to it becoming much easier to creating a new database instance, there are a growing number of use cases where there is a need to have a database instance per-user. For example, where there is a need for data isolation for security or compliance, and to maximize database access times. Also, when you think about it, this removes a lot of the complexity that comes from all those users references.
In this tutorial, you'll learn of some uses cases where a per-user database architecture makes sense and then walk through how to create a new Xata database per-user whenever a new user is created in Clerk, a user auth and management service, using Clerk webhook notifications. You'll use the Hookdeck event gateway to help both during development with localhost webhook tooling and in production to secure the webhooks and guarantee at-least-once delivery. You'll build the app in Next.js.
As mentioned, a per-user database architecture is often required to guarantee data isolation which satisfies security and compliance considerations such as access control and data residency. The location of the database can also improve data access performance.
