Generate synthetic data with Neosync

Neosync is an open-source synthetic data orchestration platform that can create synthetic data and sync it across all of your Neon database environments.

In this guide, we'll show you how to seed a Neon database with synthetic data for testing and rapid development using Neosync.

Prerequisites

To complete the steps in the guide, you require the following:

A Neon account and project. If you do not have those, see Sign up.
A Neosync account.

Neon setup

In Neon, we'll create a database for the synthetic data, define a table, and retrieve the database connection string.

Create a database

To create a database, which we'll call neosync, perform the following steps:

Navigate to the Neon Console.
Select your project.
Select Databases from the sidebar.
Select the branch where you want to create the database.
Click New Database.
Enter a database name (neosync), and select a Postgres role to be the database owner.
Click Create.

Create a table

Next, we'll create the table for your data.

In the Neon Console, select the SQL Editor from the sidebar.
Select the correct branch and the neosync database you just created.

Run the following commands to create your schema:

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS "uuid-ossp";

CREATE TABLE public.users (
    id UUID PRIMARY KEY,
    first_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    last_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    age INTEGER NOT NULL
);

note

Installing the Postgres UUID extension to auto-generate UUIDs for the id column is optional. If you prefer, you can let Neonsync generate the UUIDs column values for you.

Copy the connection string for your database

Navigate to the Dashboard in Neon and copy the connection string for the destination database from the Connection Details widget.

note

Make sure you select the correct database (neosync) from the Database drop-down menu.

Your connection string should look something like this:

postgresql://alex:AbC123dEf@ep-cool-darkness-123456.us-east-2.aws.neon.tech/neosync?sslmode=require

Neosync setup

In Neosync, we'll configure a connection to your Neon database and create a job that populates the database with synthetic data.

Configure a connection to the Neon database

Navigate to Neosync and login. Go to Connections > New Connection then click on Neon.
Enter a unique name for the connection in the Connection Name field. We'll give the connection the following name: neon-neosync
Paste the Neon database connection string in the Connection URL field and click Test Connection to verify that the connection works.
Click Submit to save the connection configuration.