Co-authored by
Hayden BleaselJTBDOS
Aleksandra SikoraEdgeDB
EdgeDB is an open-source Postgres data layer designed to address major ergonomic SQL and relational schema modeling limitations while improving type safety and performance. JTBDOS uses Neon as the database provider with Prisma as the ORM as well as Clerk for authentication. This guide will provide the steps you need to switch the database provider from Neon to EdgeDB.
For authentication, another guide will be provided to switch to EdgeDB Auth with access policies, social auth providers, and more.
Here’s how to switch from Neon to EdgeDB for your JTBDOS project.

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1. Create a new EdgeDB database

Create an account at EdgeDB Cloud. Once done, create a new instance (you can use EdgeDB’s free tier). We’ll later connect to it through the EdgeDB CLI.

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2. Swap out the required dependencies in @repo/database

Uninstall the existing dependencies…
Terminal
pnpm remove @prisma/adapter-neon @prisma/client prisma --filter @repo/database
… and install the new dependencies:
Terminal
pnpm add edgedb @edgedb/generate

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3. Setup EdgeDB in @repo/database package

In the @repo/database directory, run:
Terminal
npx edgedb project init --server-instance <org_name>/<instance_name> --non-interactive
Replace <org_name> and <instance_name> with the EdgeDB’s organization and instance you’ve previously created in the EdgeDB Cloud.
The init command creates a new subdirectory called dbschema, which contains everything related to EdgeDB: 
dbschema
├── default.esdl
└── migrations
This command also links your environment to the EdgeDB Cloud instance, allowing the EdgeDB client libraries to automatically connect to it without any additional configuration. You can also delete prisma/ directory from the @repo/database:
Terminal
rm -fr packages/database/prisma

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4. Update the database connection code

Update the database connection code to use an EdgeDB client:
packages/database/index.ts
import 'server-only';

import { createClient } from "edgedb";

export const database = createClient();

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5. Update the schema file and generate types

Now, you can modify the database schema:
dbschema/default.esdl
module default {
  type Page {
    email: str {
      constraint exclusive;
    }
    name: str
  }
}
And apply your changes by running:
Terminal
npx migration create
npx migration apply
Once complete, you can also generate a TypeScript query builder and types from your database schema:
Terminal
npx @edgedb/generate edgeql-js
npx @edgedb/generate interfaces
These commands introspect the schema of your database and generate code in the dbschema directory.

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6. Update your queries

Now you can update your queries to use the EdgeDB client. For example, here’s how we can update the page query in app/(authenticated)/page.tsx:
app/(authenticated)/page.tsx
import { database } from '@repo/database';
import edgeql from '@repo/database/dbschema/edgeql-js';

// ...

const App = async () => {
  const pagesQuery = edgeql.select(edgeql.Page, () => ({ ...edgeql.Page['*'] }));
  const pages = await pagesQuery.run(database);

  // ...
};

export default App;

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7. Replace Prisma Studio with EdgeDB UI

You can also delete the now unused Prisma Studio app located at apps/studio:
Terminal
rm -fr apps/studio
To manage your database and browse your data, you can run:
Terminal
npx edgedb ui

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8. Extract EdgeDB environment variables for deployment

When deploying your app, you need to provide the EDGEDB_SECRET_KEY and EDGEDB_INSTANCE environment variables in your app’s cloud provider to connect to your EdgeDB Cloud instance. You can generate a dedicated secret key for your instance with npx edgedb cloud secretkey create or via the web UI’s “Secret Keys” pane in your instance dashboard.