Retrieving Data From a Replica Database

  • Published on Sep 26, 2025
  • 1 minute(s) read
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This feature is available in v42 and later.

In v42 and later, you can set up a replica database to read reporting and audit-log data in on-premise instances. Doing so prevents system latency and timeouts when attempting to retrieve these kinds of data, particularly in instances processing a high volume of submissions.

This feature is built on a “leader/follower” (a.k.a “main/replica, “read/write”) architecture and reduces the load on the main database, allowing you to retrieve read-only data as frequently as needed without slowing the processing of incoming submissions.

Setting up a replica database

To set up a replica database for reading reporting and audit-log data:

  1. Provision an additional database in your instance.

  2. Add the following values to your “.env” file (Docker-based deployments), or append it to dotenv in values.yaml (Kubernetes-based deployments):

USE_RO_REPLICA_DB=true
FORMS_RO_REPLICA_DB_NAME=<replica db name>
FORMS_RO_REPLICA_DB_HOST=<replica db host>
FORMS_RO_REPLICA_DB_PORT=<replica db port>
FORMS_RO_REPLICA_DB_USER=<user>
FORMS_RO_REPLICA_DB_PASS=<password>

When editing the “.env” file, follow the instructions in Editing the “.env” file and running the application.