Local DBaaS Sandbox

On-demand database platform for development, experimentation, and coursework. One stack per directory, one .env per stack, one command to start.

Architecture

All stacks share core_network (external bridge). Adminer and tooling reach any database by container name without exposing additional ports.

Stack	Engine	Host Port	Container Port	Persistence
serious	PostgreSQL 16.3	5432	5432	Named volume
playground	PostgreSQL 16.3	5433	5432	Named volume
university	MySQL 8.0	3306	3306	Named volume
test	MySQL 8.0	3307	3306	Ephemeral
test	PostgreSQL 16.3	5434	5432	Ephemeral
adminer	Adminer 4.8	8082	8080	Stateless

All ports bound to 127.0.0.1. Custom host ports avoid collisions with other local database instances.

Quickstart

cd serious/          # or playground/, university/, test/
cp .env.example .env
docker network create core_network 2>/dev/null || true
docker compose up -d
docker compose ps

Adminer

cd adminer/
docker compose up -d
# http://db.test — server field = container name (e.g. serious_pg_v1)

Shared Network

docker network create \
    --driver bridge \
    --label com.project=databases \
    --label com.description="Shared database bridge" \
    core_network

Design

• Restart policy (restart: 'no'): containers started manually on demand. No background services consuming resources when idle.
• Persistence: test stacks are fully ephemeral (no volumes, data destroyed on docker compose down). All other stacks retain data via named Docker volumes.