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CONCEPT Cited by 1 source

Data branching

Definition

Data Branching® (PlanetScale trademark) is the variant of database branching where the branch is created with a copy of the production data, not just the production schema. It is the schema-plus-data variant of the branching primitive — "allowing you to create a new branch with a copy of your production data by restoring the latest version of a production backup to the new branch. This enables developers to have an isolated environment to test new features or run analytics without affecting their production environment." (Morrison II, 2024.)

Default PlanetScale branching is schema-only — production data is not cloned. Data branching is the opt-in variant on Base plan and above.

Use cases

  • Realistic testing — test new features against production-like data shapes + volumes rather than synthetic fixtures.
  • Analytics isolation — run expensive ad-hoc queries on production data without affecting production cluster performance.
  • Migration rehearsal — practice a schema change or data migration against a real data copy before doing it in production.

Relationship to backup restore

Data branching is implemented via backup restore — the latest production backup is restored to a new branch. This ties data branching to the canonical VTBackup + [[systems/planetscale- singularity|Singularity]] substrate canonicalised in the 2024-07-30 [[sources/2026-04-21-planetscale-faster- backups-with-sharding|faster-backups-with-sharding]] ingest. The restore-as-branch-substrate shares mechanism with replica creation from backup but with different intent (isolated sandbox vs cluster expansion).

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