Most applications need to store data—temporary or permanent. This data store could take the shape of a full blown relational database or just a much smaller cache to store most frequently used application data. Your application might need to store complex data structures or much simpler name/value pairs. Any PaaS would need reasonable support for such data storage needs so that the applications written on the platform could easily talk to the data tier and perform the CRUD operations on the application data generated during the lifespan of the application.

Heroku offers the PostgreSQL database as a relational database service to meet the need for a robust, performant, scalable, and highly available database tier. The Postgres service is offered and managed as a Heroku add-on on the Heroku platform. Using the full power of Postgres is a matter of choosing the right plan based on the complexity of your deployment. Run a few commands either on the CLI or through the...