Announcing Data Preservation Service

01 Apr 2024 · 3 minute read

We live in a world where data is as critical as air and water, powering everything from global enterprises to personal projects. At Supabase, we create products that are not just cutting-edge but also secure, reliable, and now, timeless.

Today, we are excited to introduce a groundbreaking service that bridges the digital divide with the most enduring medium known to humankind: paper. Meet pg_paper_dump, Supabase's answer to the ultimate data preservation conundrum.

Why Paper?

In the digital era, the threat landscape is constantly evolving, with new vulnerabilities emerging at a pace that's hard to keep up with. While digital backups are the norm, they are susceptible to cyber-attacks, hardware failures, and obsolescence.

This vulnerability led us to think outside the digital box and into a realm that is impervious to hacking, immune to electromagnetic pulses, and resistant to time itself: physical paper.

Historical data backup on Papyrus that inspired pg_paper_dump.

How does pg_paper_dump work?

Backup Process

1. Select Your Data: Choose the databases you wish to back up with pg_paper_dump.
2. Encode and Print: Our system encodes your data with Comic Sans and prints it onto durable paper.
3. Secure Storage: We store your paper backups in a location of your choice or utilize our secure Arctic Vault for maximum security.

Restoration Process

1. Select your recovery point: Thanks to point-in-time recovery, we can restore your data up until any specific page.
2. Restore: Our Mechanical Turks are trained to decode data encoded in Comic Sans and will input your data with reasonable human-accuracy into your destination database.

Scaling data preservation with containers

Our Analog Engineering team has developed a container orchestration protocol to coordinate the backup and restore process of large databases.

Who is pg_paper_dump for?

• Companies that use fax machines.
• Future SOC 4 compliant companies.
• Vogons.

Features and Benefits

• Security: Provides a level of security that is fundamentally beyond the reach of digital vulnerabilities.
• Eco-conscious: Our materials are selected for minimal environmental impact without compromising on durability or legibility.
• Simplicity of Restoration: When the time comes, restoring your data is as simple as taking the printed codes and typing them back into Supabase's SQL editor.

Availability

Sign up for our open beta to get access to pg_paper_dump now or try it out our self-hosted solution.

As all of our products, we have open-sourced the code and made it available to the public to be used without any restrictions here.

The Future is Here

We are offering a bridge between these worlds, providing a backup solution that stands the test of time. Join us in redefining data security and making history, one sheet at a time.