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Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

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Re: Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

#41

Post by close04 »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #38
close04 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is solid but the reliance on Google (or other provider) might be the weak point. The cloud may be great but still a gamble if you're totally at the whim of a provider that at any point can make changes that leave you out in the rain. And Google is no stranger to this kind of thing. Dropbox came at a time when people were seeing the downsides of private solutions and the cloud was there to mitigate th…

> These days people are starting to see the downsides of relying on the cloud and are moving to private solutions. All available evidence is contrary to this point.

I see more and more people noticing the massive privacy (just an example) implications that many of these solutions bring and they're trying to regain control of their data. This is why I said "people are starting to see". Of course I can't see into the future but there's no reason to believe the trend isn't there at all.

But going back to OP's comment above and the link to the Dropbox topic, a decade ago many were not seeing the move to the cloud as anything more than a gimmick compared to the established private solution, not seeing the trend.

P.S. Just to be clear, by "private solution" I don't mean hosting in your own basement. It's retaining control over your solution even if it is hosted in someone's datacenter.

Re: Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

#42

Post by eagsalazar2 »

badestrand wrote: post #29

Looks neat! Questions: - Do updates show immediately (for both directions)? - What are the limits of read/write queries? - What are the limits of rows? - Can I use formulas in the sheet? - How is the type handling? Does everything get treated as text or are there date and number types? - Do formatting options for columns (e.g. for number of decimals) survive when I alter things with the API?

All the same questions, would love to hear answers to other questions here...

Re: Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

#43

Post by latchkey »

lucasverra wrote: post #4
jonny_eh wrote: post #2

How does this compare to Airtable?

AT is my go to solution for quick database needs for prototyping. very simple to share “auto created” documentation for external devs to connect via its marvelous api. plus 1200 row free (infinite tables) is good to start

I'm building something with Airtable now, but definitely see the need to move away from it quickly. More than anything, I just like the appeal of the web UX to get started in designing the data model. It allows me to work with an 'excel guy' in order to figure out what we need for our application.

The API, which is very well documented, is far from marvelous. For example, there is no way to use a transaction to update two (or more) tables at the same time. It is also rate limited to a tiny 5 requests per second, even under paid plans. The API also does not allow you to request relational data in one request. You make a request to get the parent id, then all the children, by parent id, in a separate request.

I'll also say that the company feels a bit dead. You look at the changelog and they add a couple features here and there, while other features, such as barcode scanning (probably a weekend hackathon feature) languish by the wayside. They respond quickly to support requests with answers like 'we will add that to the long list of things we want to do'... riiigght...

Re: Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

#47

Post by DoreenMichele »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #20
felipap wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminded me of the top comment on the "Show HN" of Dropbox, back in 2007: "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Instead of as a disparagement of the product, you could see this as a no-judgement PSA for anyone interested in and capable of running such an alternative. Incidentally I am precisely looking for something like this so for me that’s valuable :)

I didn't "hear" it as suggesting it was a disparagement of the product, more like a "LOL, sure, that's so easy!" sarcasm. "You, too, can do this -- if you are a former astronaut and billionaire. No big!"

A lot of advice that "You can easily do it yourself" presumes a fairly high level of skill and knowledgeable in sometimes multiple domains. That presumption isn't crazy talk for the HN audience. Plenty of people will have the requisite background knowledge to jump on a comment suggesting a DIY alternative.

But that in no way means there isn't a market for the product. Plenty of people may need or want X and not have the capacity to do it themselves, even with some instruction.

Re: Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

#48

Post by saghm »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #47
nothrabannosir wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of as a disparagement of the product, you could see this as a no-judgement PSA for anyone interested in and capable of running such an alternative. Incidentally I am precisely looking for something like this so for me that’s valuable :)

I didn't "hear" it as suggesting it was a disparagement of the product, more like a "LOL, sure, that's so easy!" sarcasm. "You, too, can do this -- if you are a former astronaut and billionaire. No big!" A lot of advice that "You can easily do it yourself" presumes a fairly high level of skill and knowledgeable in sometimes multiple domains. That presumption isn't crazy talk for the HN audience. Plenty of people will…

I don't see anything in the comment claiming that it's "easy" to do yourself, just "possible". I don't think they'd bother saying "Happy to answer any questions" if they thought that it was trivial to do without help.

Re: Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

#49

Post by [deleted] »

saghm wrote: post #48
DoreenMichele wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't "hear" it as suggesting it was a disparagement of the product, more like a "LOL, sure, that's so easy!" sarcasm. "You, too, can do this -- if you are a former astronaut and billionaire. No big!" A lot of advice that "You can easily do it yourself" presumes a fairly high level of skill and knowledgeable in sometimes multiple domains. That presumption isn't crazy talk for the HN audience. Plenty of people will…

I don't see anything in the comment claiming that it's "easy" to do yourself, just "possible". I don't think they'd bother saying "Happy to answer any questions" if they thought that it was trivial to do without help.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database

#50

Post by Zaheer »

IloveHN84 wrote: post #11
Zaheer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One benefit of approach I mentioned is that there's nothing to host. All just client-side code. Although I do see the use for hosting: latency for loading data from Google Sheets isn't great and adding a cache helped in my case.

In this case, what have you used for caching?

I have a lambda polling the sheet every 5 minutes and save that to S3. Cloudfront as CDN on top.
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