Fluxora Backend uses a pg.Pool (node-postgres) for all database access. The pool is configured via environment variables and includes proactive exhaustion detection to prevent unbounded request queuing.
Database access is centralized through two layers:
src/db/pool.ts— Core pool infrastructure with timeout enforcement, error classification, and metricssrc/db/client.ts— Application-facingDatabaseClientwrapper that delegates to the pool layer
All queries go through the pool layer to ensure consistent timeout enforcement, observability, and error handling.
pg.Pool.query<T>() / PoolClient.query<T>() constrain T to QueryResultRow (an index signature). Do not pass bare domain interfaces (ReplayCursor, ContractEvent, VacuumRow, StreamRecord, …) as that generic — they fail tsc with TS2344.
Required pattern (already used in streamRepository, apiKeyRepository, dlqRepository):
- Query with
Record<string, unknown>(or omit the generic). - Map each row through an explicit
rowToX()helper into the domain type.
const result = await client.query<Record<string, unknown>>(sql, params);
return result.rows.map(rowToReplayCursor);Full convention: src/db/repositories/README.md.
src/db/types.ts declares the shapes the application believes PostgreSQL holds. Because nothing in a normal build compares those declarations against the database, a migration that renames or retypes a column can leave the types asserting something untrue, and the mismatch only surfaces later as a value of the wrong shape.
scripts/check-db-schema-types.mjs closes that gap. With a migrated DATABASE_URL it:
- reads the declared interfaces (and their type aliases) from
src/db/types.ts, - maps each declared property onto its column (camelCase properties become snake_case columns),
- introspects the mapped tables (
streams,api_keys,contract_events) throughinformation_schema.columns, and - fails (exit code 1) when a declared column is missing — a rename or drop — or when its SQL type family disagrees with the declared type — a retype.
Columns that exist in the schema but are not part of the declared domain shape (for example streams.sender_address_hash or streams.legal_hold) are reported as non-fatal drift, as is a declared non-null property backed by a nullable column.
# after `pnpm run migrate` against the test database
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://test_user:test_password@localhost:5432/indexer_test pnpm run check:db-typesWithout DATABASE_URL the check is skipped, matching the other live-database suites. CI runs it in the test job immediately after applying migrations, so renaming a mapped column in a migration fails the pipeline until src/db/types.ts is updated. Intentional representation differences — a timestamp column exposed as an ISO-8601 string, or a JSON-serialized text column exposed as string[] — are recorded with a reason in SCHEMA_TYPE_CONTRACT inside the script.
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
DATABASE_URL |
— | PostgreSQL connection string (required) |
DB_POOL_MIN |
2 |
Minimum idle connections kept alive |
DB_POOL_MAX |
10 |
Maximum total connections |
DB_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT |
5000 |
ms to wait for a connection before timing out |
DB_IDLE_TIMEOUT |
30000 |
ms before an idle connection is closed |
POOL_QUEUE_LIMIT |
50 |
Max requests allowed to queue before fast-failing with 503 |
STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_MS |
5000 |
Per-connection statement timeout in ms. Set to 0 to disable. |
On every new physical connection, the pool's connect event fires SET statement_timeout = $1 with the value of STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_MS. This applies a session-level limit so any query that runs longer than the configured duration is automatically canceled by PostgreSQL with error code 57014 (query_canceled).
new connection established
│
▼
SET statement_timeout = STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_MS
│
▼
connection ready for queries
│
▼
query exceeds timeout?
│
YES ──► PG error 57014 → QueryTimeoutError → HTTP 504 Gateway Timeout
│
NO
│
▼
result returned normally
Set STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_MS=0 to skip the SET statement_timeout call entirely. This is useful for long-running maintenance scripts or migrations that should not be interrupted.
| PG error code | Error class | HTTP status |
|---|---|---|
57014 (query_canceled) |
QueryTimeoutError |
504 Gateway Timeout |
Using a parameterized query (SET statement_timeout = $1) prevents SQL injection. The timeout value is validated as a non-negative integer by the integerEnv schema helper before it reaches the pool.
When a request is cancelled (e.g., client disconnects, HTTP request aborted), the in-flight database query should also be cancelled to free the connection back to the pool. This prevents "zombie queries" that continue consuming database resources after the caller has given up.
PostgreSQL supports query cancellation via the pg_cancel_backend() function, which sends a SIGINT to the backend process executing the query. The node-postgres driver exposes this through the PoolClient:
const client = await pool.connect();
try {
// Start a long-running query
const queryPromise = client.query('SELECT pg_sleep(300)');
// If the request is cancelled, we can't cancel the query directly,
// but statement_timeout will kill it automatically
await queryPromise;
} finally {
client.release();
}Fluxora uses statement_timeout as the primary cancellation mechanism rather than explicit pg_cancel_backend() calls. This approach has several advantages:
- Simplicity — No need to track PIDs or maintain cancellation tokens
- Reliability — Timeout is enforced by PostgreSQL itself, not by application code
- Consistency — Every query has a bounded execution time, regardless of cancellation
- Observability — Timeouts are surfaced as
QueryTimeoutErrorand tracked in metrics
When a query exceeds STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_MS, PostgreSQL automatically cancels it with error code 57014, which the pool layer maps to QueryTimeoutError.
When an HTTP request is aborted (client disconnect, load balancer timeout), Express may or may not propagate the cancellation to the database layer, depending on where the query is in its lifecycle:
- Before query starts — The request handler throws early, query never executes
- Query in flight — The query continues until
statement_timeoutfires or it completes naturally - Query completes before timeout — Result is discarded (client is gone)
This is acceptable because statement_timeout bounds the resource consumption even when the client disconnects. No query can hold a connection indefinitely.
tests/db/client.test.ts validates that deliberately slow queries (SELECT pg_sleep(10)) are cancelled at the configured timeout bound and throw QueryTimeoutError, regardless of whether the client is still waiting for the result.
When a query is submitted, the pool checks pool.waitingCount against POOL_QUEUE_LIMIT before attempting to acquire a connection. If the waiting queue has reached the limit, the request is rejected immediately with a PoolExhaustedError rather than queuing indefinitely.
incoming request
│
▼
waitingCount >= POOL_QUEUE_LIMIT?
│
YES ──► PoolExhaustedError (503) + log pool_exhausted + increment counter
│
NO
│
▼
acquire connection → execute query
Checking waitingCount >= POOL_QUEUE_LIMIT is more accurate than checking totalCount >= max. A full pool with zero waiting requests is healthy — all connections are actively serving queries. The queue length is the real saturation signal.
Every exhaustion event emits a structured warn log:
{
"timestamp": "2026-05-28T13:00:00.000Z",
"level": "warn",
"message": "Postgres pool exhausted",
"event": "pool_exhausted",
"total": 10,
"idle": 0,
"waiting": 50,
"queueLimit": 50
}Four metrics are exposed via the /metrics endpoint:
| Metric | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
db_pool_active_connections |
Gauge | Checked-out (in-use) connections |
db_pool_idle_connections |
Gauge | Idle connections in the pool |
db_pool_waiting_requests |
Gauge | Requests waiting for a connection |
db_pool_exhausted_total |
Counter | Total requests rejected due to queue limit |
Gauges are updated on every connect, acquire, and remove pool event.
| Event | Trigger | Action |
|---|---|---|
connect |
New physical connection opened | Apply statement_timeout, sync gauges, debug log |
acquire |
Connection checked out | Sync gauges |
remove |
Connection closed/removed | Sync gauges, debug log |
error |
Idle client error | Error log |
PoolExhaustedError should be mapped to an HTTP 503 Service Unavailable response. QueryTimeoutError should be mapped to an HTTP 504 Gateway Timeout response. Both are handled automatically by the error handler in src/middleware/errorHandler.ts.
src/db/client.ts exports a singleton DatabaseClient instance (db) that serves as the primary database interface for the application. It wraps the centralized pool infrastructure to ensure every query benefits from timeout enforcement, error classification, and observability.
import { db } from './db/client.js';
// Simple query
const result = await db.query('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = $1', [userId]);
// Get a client for transactions
const client = await db.getClient();
try {
await client.query('BEGIN');
await client.query('INSERT INTO ...');
await client.query('COMMIT');
} finally {
client.release();
}Every query through DatabaseClient is automatically protected by:
- Statement timeout enforcement — Queries exceeding
STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_MSare cancelled by PostgreSQL (error code57014→QueryTimeoutError) - Pool exhaustion detection — Requests are fast-failed when the queue limit is reached (
PoolExhaustedError) - Error classification — Database errors are mapped to semantic error types:
QueryTimeoutError(PG57014) → HTTP504 Gateway TimeoutPoolExhaustedError→ HTTP503 Service UnavailableDuplicateEntryError(PG23505) → HTTP409 Conflict
- Observability — Slow queries, timeouts, and errors are logged and exposed as Prometheus metrics
Calling pool.query() directly bypasses all timeout enforcement, metrics, and error classification. The pool's raw .query() method does not apply the statement timeout or record telemetry — those are implemented in the query() helper function exported from src/db/pool.ts, which DatabaseClient uses internally.
✅ Correct:
import { db } from './db/client.js';
await db.query('SELECT 1'); // ✓ timeout enforced, metrics recorded❌ Incorrect:
import { getPool } from './db/pool.js';
const pool = getPool();
await pool.query('SELECT 1'); // ✗ bypasses timeout, no metricstests/db/client.test.ts validates:
- Query timeout enforcement (deliberate slow queries are cancelled)
- Error classification (timeouts distinguished from connection errors)
- Metrics tracking (
dbQueryErrorsTotal,dbSlowQueriesTotal) - Connection lifecycle (getClient, close)
db_pool_exhausted_totalcounter is increasingdb_pool_waiting_requestsgauge is consistently at or nearPOOL_QUEUE_LIMIT- API returning
503responses on database-backed routes
- Check
db_pool_active_connections— if it equalsDB_POOL_MAX, the pool is fully saturated. - Check for slow queries: look for
"message": "Slow postgres query"in logs. - Consider increasing
DB_POOL_MAXif the database server can handle more connections. - Consider increasing
POOL_QUEUE_LIMITif bursts are short-lived and acceptable to queue. - Check for connection leaks: if
db_pool_active_connectionsstays high after traffic drops, a caller may not be releasing connections.
The contract_events table is partitioned by happened_at to ensure bounded growth. Partition management must be performed periodically to drop old data:
- Ensure
dropOldPartitionsfromsrc/scripts/db-ops.tsis scheduled via cron or a periodic job. - The function should be invoked with the retention period (e.g., 30 days).
- The job must run with a database role that has permissions to execute
DROP TABLE. - Validate that detached partitions are backed up per the existing S3 retention policy before actually dropping them.
- Run the function in
dryRun = truemode initially to audit partitions that will be dropped.
restoreDatabase and dropOldPartitions are guarded before any database or
S3 operation runs. Each operation prints the target environment and requires
confirm: true; a production target additionally requires
acknowledgeProduction: true. Set dryRun: true to report the planned source,
target, and number of partitions that would be changed without executing the
operation.
const result = await dropOldPartitions(pool, 'contract_events', 30, {
dryRun: true,
targetEnvironment: 'staging',
})
// After reviewing the dry-run result, explicitly confirm a live run:
await dropOldPartitions(pool, 'contract_events', 30, {
dryRun: false,
targetEnvironment: 'staging',
confirm: true,
})To avoid rows landing in the unindexed DEFAULT partition, the background job src/jobs/partitionMaintenance.ts pre-creates monthly partitions ahead of schedule for every range-partitioned table it manages.
| Table | Managed today? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
contract_events |
Yes | Range-partitioned since 20260627000000_contract_events_partitioning.ts |
audit_logs |
Not yet | Currently a plain table (see 1774715200000_audit-and-webhook-outbox.ts). The job detects partitioning automatically at runtime — once audit_logs is migrated to PARTITION BY RANGE, this job starts managing it with no code change required. |
The job checks each table via pg_class.relkind = 'p' + pg_partitioned_table.partstrat = 'r' before touching it; a table that is not range-partitioned is skipped silently (logged at debug, not an error).
Monthly partitions are named <table>_y<YYYY>m<MM> (e.g. contract_events_y2026m07), matching the convention already used by tests/db/contractEvents.partitionPruning.test.ts and tests/db/vacuumCollector.collect.test.ts. Month boundaries are computed in UTC (Date.UTC(...)) to avoid off-by-one errors near midnight on a server running in a non-UTC timezone.
Partitions are created a documented interval ahead of use: the partition covering month M is created during month M - leadTimeMonths, so it exists for at least leadTimeMonths months (≈ 28 × leadTimeMonths days) before a single row can require it. That buffer is what makes a failed or missed run survivable — the next run self-heals long before the partition is needed.
The default lead time is DEFAULT_LEAD_TIME_MONTHS = 3 months. It is configurable, in whole calendar months, with this precedence:
| # | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | leadTimeMonths option to runPartitionMaintenance(pool, { leadTimeMonths }) |
Highest precedence; used by tests and by callers that need a specific value. |
| 2 | monthsAhead option |
Deprecated alias with the same meaning, kept for callers written against the previous signature. |
| 3 | PARTITION_MAINTENANCE_LEAD_TIME_MONTHS env var (config.partitionMaintenance.leadTimeMonths) |
Deployment-level knob. |
| 4 | DEFAULT_LEAD_TIME_MONTHS (3) |
Built-in fallback. |
Keep the configured value >= 2 so a single missed monthly boundary cannot exhaust the buffer. A non-integer or negative configured value is ignored in favour of the built-in default rather than propagated, so a typo in a deployment's environment cannot silently disable pre-creation. The run result reports the value actually used as leadTimeMonths.
- The job runs on a daily cron schedule (
0 0 * * *) and once immediately at process startup (src/jobs/queue.ts), pre-creating the current month plus every month starting inside the configured lead time (default3months). - It acquires a single non-blocking advisory lock (
pg_try_advisory_lock(123456789), exported asPARTITION_MAINTENANCE_LOCK_ID) before doing any work. If another instance already holds the lock, the run is a no-op — it does not wait or retry, so overlapping cron + manual invocations across multiple app instances never race to create the same partition. - Every
CREATE TABLEusesIF NOT EXISTS, so re-running the job when all partitions already exist performs zero DDL and is always a safe no-op — the defining idempotency property required of this job. - The lock is released in a
finallyblock, so a failure partway through (e.g. one table's DDL fails) never leaves the lock held for subsequent runs.
Every run checks whether the current month's partition already existed before this run created it. Since the job pre-creates months in advance, the current month's partition should already exist by the time it becomes current — if it's still missing, an earlier scheduled run was missed or failed, and rows for today may have already been landing in the unindexed DEFAULT partition.
When this happens, the job:
- Emits a structured
error-level log:{ "event": "partition_maintenance_behind_schedule", "table": "contract_events", "partition": "contract_events_y2026m07", "level": "error", "message": "Partition maintenance fell behind schedule: current-month partition was missing" } - Increments the
fluxora_partition_maintenance_behind_schedule_total{table="..."}counter. - Raises the
partition_maintenance_behind_scheduleoperator alert (see below), so the event is pageable from metrics and not only discoverable from logs. - Still creates the missing partition immediately afterward (self-healing) — the alert reports a
DEFAULT-partition risk window that already occurred, it does not prevent the fix.
- alert: PartitionMaintenanceBehindSchedule
expr: increase(fluxora_partition_maintenance_behind_schedule_total[1d]) > 0
severity: critical
annotations:
summary: "A scheduled partition pre-creation run was missed — rows may have landed in the DEFAULT partition"Every failure that matters to an operator is raised through raiseAlert() in src/lib/alerts.ts, which emits a structured error log record and increments fluxora_alerts_raised_total{alert,severity} — so metric-based alerting rules can page on it even when no log shipping is configured. raiseAlert() never throws, and can additionally be forwarded to an incident-management provider via setAlertSink().
| Alert name | Severity | Raised when |
|---|---|---|
partition_creation_failed |
critical | A CREATE TABLE … PARTITION OF threw. The error is re-thrown afterwards, so the queue retries (and eventually dead-letters) the run instead of treating it as a success. |
partition_maintenance_behind_schedule |
critical | The current month's partition was missing — a previous run was missed or failed. |
partition_shortfall_detected |
critical | The pre-write guard (below) found a required partition missing just before an insert. |
- alert: PartitionCreationFailed
expr: increase(fluxora_alerts_raised_total{alert="partition_creation_failed"}[15m]) > 0
severity: critical
annotations:
summary: "A partition could not be created — writes for that interval are at risk"
- alert: PartitionShortfallBeforeWrite
expr: increase(fluxora_alerts_raised_total{alert="partition_shortfall_detected"}[15m]) > 0
severity: critical
annotations:
summary: "A write needed a partition that did not exist — partition maintenance was not running"The job is a scheduled defence, so between two runs time can advance past the created partitions (a deploy that never started the job, an outage, a mis-set lead time). The next write would then fail with an opaque no partition of relation "contract_events" found for row — a write error raised far from its cause.
ensurePartitionCoverage() (exported from src/jobs/partitionMaintenance.ts, same module as the job so both share the partition-naming and bound math) is called by PostgresContractEventStore.insertMany() before the insert is issued:
- It computes the partitions covering every distinct month in the batch's
happened_atvalues. - A single catalog query reports whether the parent is range-partitioned and which of those partitions exist (no per-row work, one round-trip in the happy path).
- If a required partition is missing it raises
partition_shortfall_detected, then creates the partition so the write that follows cannot fail — alerting and self-healing in one pass. A create that fails raisespartition_creation_failedand is reported asfailedon the result.
The guard is strictly fail-open: an unmanaged (non-partitioned) table, an inconclusive probe response, or a probe error leaves insertMany() behaving exactly as it did before — observability must never be the reason a writable batch fails.
| Metric | Type | Labels | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
fluxora_partitions_created_total |
Counter | table |
Incremented once per partition actually created (idempotent no-ops are not counted), by both the job and the pre-write guard |
fluxora_partition_maintenance_behind_schedule_total |
Counter | table |
Incremented when the current-month partition was found missing (see above) |
fluxora_partition_maintenance_failures_total |
Counter | table |
Incremented on every failed partition-creation attempt |
fluxora_alerts_raised_total |
Counter | alert, severity |
Every operator alert raised through src/lib/alerts.ts |
- Table names come exclusively from the developer-controlled
CANDIDATE_TABLESconstant, never from user input. - Partition names are derived deterministically from the table name and a UTC year/month, and are additionally passed through
quoteIdentifier()before being interpolated into DDL (defence-in-depth against a future change widening the input surface). - Partition bound literals are ISO-8601 UTC timestamps produced by
Date#toISOString(), validated against a strict regex before interpolation — thepgdriver cannot parameterize DDL bound expressions, so this validation substitutes for parameterization. - The job's DB principal needs
CREATEon the parent table only; no superuser privileges are required.
tests/jobs/partitionMaintenance.test.ts covers: lock acquisition/skip/release (including release-on-throw), input validation, per-table managed/unmanaged gating, idempotent re-runs, partition naming (including year rollover and UTC boundary edge cases), lead-time resolution (option, deprecated alias, configured default, invalid-value fallback, PARTITION_MAINTENANCE_LEAD_TIME_MONTHS), behind-schedule detection and metrics, failure alerting (alerts raised and the error still re-thrown), and identifier-quoting security checks — all against a mocked Pool, no live database required.
tests/db/contractEvents.partitionCoverage.test.ts covers the pre-write guard against an in-memory emulation of Postgres: the probe's single round-trip and month deduplication, partition_shortfall_detected + self-heal, detection-only mode, failed-create alerting, fail-open behaviour for unmanaged tables / unexpected probe shapes / probe errors, and the issue's validation scenario — advance time past the partitions the job created and assert the shortfall is detected (and alerted on) before the write fails.
tests/lib/alerts.test.ts covers the alerting facility itself: log level and record shape, metric increment, sink dispatch, name normalisation, and the never-throws guarantee.
pnpm test tests/jobs/partitionMaintenance.test.ts tests/db/contractEvents.partitionCoverage.test.ts tests/lib/alerts.test.ts# Alert when exhaustion events occur
- alert: DbPoolExhausted
expr: increase(db_pool_exhausted_total[5m]) > 0
severity: warning
# Alert when waiting queue is consistently high
- alert: DbPoolQueueHigh
expr: db_pool_waiting_requests > 20
for: 2m
severity: warningFluxora provides PostgreSQL logical replication as an enterprise streaming mechanism for external consumers to tail real-time chain events directly from the database. Logical replication provides a high-throughput, push-based alternative to polling GET /internal/indexer/events (src/routes/indexer.ts).
The publication fluxora_contract_events_pub is narrowly scoped to ensure data isolation and security:
- Single Table Scope: Scoped exclusively to the
contract_eventstable. Tables containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or sensitive tokens (such asstreams,api_keys, orwebhook_outbox) are explicitly excluded from replication. - Append-Only Operations: Configured with
WITH (publish = 'insert'). Sincecontract_eventsis an append-only event ledger, restricting publication strictly toINSERToperations eliminates unnecessary WAL replication overhead for table maintenance and prevents exposing operational updates or deletes.
To support logical replication, the primary PostgreSQL instance must be configured with the following parameters in postgresql.conf:
| Parameter | Required Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
wal_level |
logical |
Enables logical decoding and WAL retention for replication slots. Requires database server restart. |
max_replication_slots |
>= 5 |
Maximum number of concurrent replication slots supported by the server. |
max_wal_senders |
>= 5 |
Maximum number of concurrent WAL sender processes. |
Additionally, external streaming consumers require a database role with the REPLICATION attribute (or membership in pg_read_all_data along with table-level SELECT permissions on contract_events).
Ensure wal_level is set to logical:
SHOW wal_level;
-- Expected output: logicalConnect to the primary database as an administrative or replication user and create a replication slot using the standard pgoutput plugin:
SELECT pg_create_logical_replication_slot('fluxora_contract_events_slot', 'pgoutput');Configure your streaming consumer (e.g., Debezium, Kafka Connect Postgres Source, or custom pgoutput consumer) with the following connection properties:
- Publication Name:
fluxora_contract_events_pub - Replication Slot Name:
fluxora_contract_events_slot - Plugin:
pgoutput - Tables:
contract_events
Verify that the consumer has attached and is actively consuming WAL streams:
SELECT
pid,
usename,
application_name,
client_addr,
state,
sync_state,
sent_lsn,
write_lsn,
flush_lsn,
replay_lsn
FROM pg_stat_replication;A PostgreSQL logical replication slot guarantees zero data loss by preserving write-ahead logs (WAL) on the primary database until the consumer confirms receipt (confirmed_flush_lsn).
Warning
If a streaming consumer disconnects or fails to acknowledge WAL data, PostgreSQL will retain all unconsumed WAL segments on disk. If left unmonitored, an inactive slot can lead to rapid primary disk growth and eventual disk space exhaustion.
Operators must monitor replication lag via pg_replication_slots:
SELECT
slot_name,
plugin,
active,
pg_size_pretty(pg_wal_lsn_diff(pg_current_wal_lsn(), confirmed_flush_lsn)) AS lag_bytes,
pg_wal_lsn_diff(pg_current_wal_lsn(), confirmed_flush_lsn) AS lag_bytes_raw
FROM pg_replication_slots
WHERE slot_name = 'fluxora_contract_events_slot';If a consumer is decommissioned or experiences an extended outage and lag exceeds safety thresholds (e.g., > 10 GB):
- Check if the slot is active:
SELECT active FROM pg_replication_slots WHERE slot_name = 'fluxora_contract_events_slot'; - If
active = falseand disk usage is critical, drop the slot to free retained WAL segments:SELECT pg_drop_replication_slot('fluxora_contract_events_slot');
- Note: Dropping a slot requires the external consumer to perform a full re-snapshot when re-attaching.
# Alert when a replication slot falls behind by more than 5 GB
- alert: PostgresReplicationSlotLagHigh
expr: pg_replication_slots_bytes_behind{slot_name="fluxora_contract_events_slot"} > 5368709120
for: 5m
severity: warning
# Alert when a replication slot is inactive while lag accumulates
- alert: PostgresReplicationSlotInactive
expr: pg_replication_slots_active{slot_name="fluxora_contract_events_slot"} == 0
for: 10m
severity: warning