This is really exciting - the team behind this really cares about developers and their experience. They see a way things could be better, and regardless of technical difficulty, say, "why not?" Forking a db? Brilliant. Offload expensive task to passive followers? Obvious (in hindsight). Instant, brain-dead db provisioning? Of course.
Personally, the only terrifying thing about this is that when Heroku releases something, it's been in the works for a good long while, and they usually have a stream of incredible releases waiting right behind it. The mind boggles at what they're going to be doing next.
When I read "forking" and "following" on there, it was a revelations: of course, that's so obvious! Those terms are much friendlier than "replication" or "master-slave". It describes the desired result, instead of the underlying technology.
Personally, the only terrifying thing about this is that when Heroku releases something, it's been in the works for a good long while, and they usually have a stream of incredible releases waiting right behind it. The mind boggles at what they're going to be doing next.
But we'll be first in line for it :)