The SQL Database Connector is useless for non-enterprise users. Are there any workarounds?

Need help Database
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Bubble users who need to securely connect to a SQL database require a static IP address from bubble to whitelist. (Static IPs are only available on the enterprise price plan.)

For non-enterprise users, there seem to be only two possible workaround:

Option A: Allow all public IP access
This option should not be used as it’s unsecure. It involves creating a firewall rule with a range from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 so that any of bubbles dynamic IPs can access the DB.

Option B: Setup an API for the database
This involves setting up an API for the DB which can then be used with the API Connector plugin to pull in data to bubble.

Are these the only two options?

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Hey Can you please help in Setting up Option B: Setup an API for the Database using Azure

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Azure will tell you which IP is being blocked, just add it to your firewall.

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Which part of ‘Static IP’ did you not understand?

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which part of someone asking about azure and I comment about azure did you not understand?

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Appreciate your response, but the reason why bubble’s IP address cannot be added to the Azure firewall is because their IPs change all the time.

I should have made that clearer on the original thread.

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After I’ve ended up adding like 6 or so different Ips it was blocking I never had another issue. My personal experience.

make an http request to an azure function.

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Is anyone aware of any other solutions?

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@EliteDataEngineer The options you have listed are complete. If you have a scenario that prohibits the use of opening your firewall for database access you are limited in your options to the ones you have listed.

Pay for a dedicated instance. If you can’t afford it, I wonder why the need for such security?

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@EliteDataEngineer I’ve come to the same problem.

Option C (similar to option B but simpler if you know Make/n8n):

Make.com / n8n.io have static IP ranges, so you can use them as intermediates.
Pros: easy if you already know how to use make.com / n8n.io
Cons: it really depends on the type of app you’re building, as it can cost some money (except if you put n8n on your own server, as it’s open source).
It worked for me for internal tools for SMBs.

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Many small and medium businesses don’t have +$1000/month to put a dedicated instance, yet they have a CTO that wants this security (and he’s right!).
If it’s for your own business, you can sometimes take this risk, but if you work for a client, you can’t.

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Use Supabase and you have out of the box api on top of your Postgres database

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2nd Supabase recommendation I’ve had today. (Other one being to serve as a seperate bubble backend)

Thanks, I’ll research this as an option!

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We’re dealing with this same issue. What a joke.

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@w.leonard
It really is, especially given the fact that any serious data-driven project is reliant on a SQL database.

I’m still researching what the best API connection tool is for my Microsoft Azure SQL database.

I’ve tested and really like DreamFactory’s API connector but it’s super expensive and therefore not viable ($1.5k/mo). (Their free open-source version doesn’t support MS SQL)

Microsoft also has an API Management service which I need to look further into. They have a free tier but I’m unsure of how secure/fast it will be given that Microsoft don’t tend to do things for free.

Worst case scenrio is that I’ll need to move my SQL database from Azure to Supabase due to their databases having an API connection ($25/mo). But this would be unfortunate as I’d like to stay within the Microsoft ecosystem.

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You can do this on Azure as well: Quickstart to Data API builder for Azure SQL Database | Microsoft Learn

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Oh! That sounds like a great solution.

I ran into this same problem and we have an entire team working on an API. This would have been so much better. Also they are working from a MySQL DB instance, so for my current project this may not have affected the outcome but I am going to definitely keep this tidbit of info around. I have been hearing more and more about supabase lately.

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I’ve written up my solution as a new thread which you can find here.

@mc3digital @ben13 @w.leonard @AutomationZilla.com @doug.burden

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