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Databases live on the server’s Databases tab, and only on a type that hosts them — application or database.

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Installing an engine

One engine per machine, chosen when you install it:
  • MySQL 8, listening on 3306.
  • PostgreSQL 16, listening on 5432.
Neither port is opened to the internet. An application server on another machine reaches the database over the private connection, not through the public firewall.

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Databases and users

A database is a database. A user is an account, and an account can reach any number of databases, or none yet. They are separate because sharing is ordinary rather than a mistake: a staging site beside the live one, an admin panel beside what it administers, a monolith served on two vhosts. Each site connects as its own account, so one can be shut out later without touching the other. Grants are applied as a whole. Whatever is ticked when you save is what the account can reach — anything unticked is revoked.

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Passwords

Shipways generates the password and keeps it, encrypted, so it can put it back if a site’s environment file is ever rebuilt. It is not shown in the panel. Rotating the user is how you get a value you can read, and doing so means updating anything that was using the old one. Connect as builds a connection string for a chosen account, and can open it in a desktop database client. The password is hidden on screen but included in what is copied — it is the same password the site’s environment file holds.

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Naming a site when you create a database

Creating a database with a site named writes the credentials straight into that site’s environment file, so there is nothing to copy across. That only works cleanly on a site that has not been deployed yet, because the environment file is seeded once and never touched again afterwards.

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Removing one

Dropping a database drops it. There is no undo beyond a backup, which is the argument for having one. Removing a site never touches a database. Its files and certificate go, and any process running for it stops, but the data stays.