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Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

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Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#21

Post by hn_reddit_human »

If I understand correctly, transactions are currently not supported for doing any advanced business logic beyond building CRUD: https://www.prisma.io/docs/reference/tools-and-interfaces/pr...

Also, no mention of aggregations, or if someone could point me to it?

As far as typed query builders go, even though things like JOOQ are simply amazing, but I fear that the query building approach has not really caught on for database access and people seem to prefer "object oriented" methods like ORMs.

Any comments from HN folks about why that is?

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#22

Post by rodolphoarruda »

"The problem: Working with databases is difficult"

This makes me think of all brainstorming sessions I attended in my life with people asking over and over again, not convincing themselves with most answers: "Ok, guys, seriously now, what problem do we think we solving here?"

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#23

Post by snowoutside »

nikolasburk wrote: post #6
snowoutside wrote: post #3

I empathize with the frustration that this library is trying to solve. It's pretty nifty too! Ultimately, however, I don't believe this is the correct approach. The problem with this tool, like every other multi-SQL-flavor-SQL ORM and query builder, is that it requires users to learn yet another language. In addition to Node.js and SQL, users need to learn the Prisma query language. This is not trival, and users that…

Nikolas from the Prisma team here, thanks a lot for your comment! > The problem with this tool, like every other multi-SQL-flavor-SQL ORM and query builder, is that it requires users to learn yet another language. In addition to Node.js and SQL, users need to learn the Prisma query language. This is not trival, and users that are already accustomed to working with SQL will need to relearn PrismaSQL. I'm not sure I'd…

Thanks for your response Nikolas!

Prisma's approach is well thought out, and I appreciate the new angle on an old and challenging problem. For Typescript users, especially new users, Prisma can be a big win. Abstracting SQL has huge benefits here (especially type safety/static analysis), and I look forward to seeing where this project goes.

That being said, my favorite database is PostgreSQL because it has so many features (and I'm just comfortable with it). At some point, a tool like Prisma (or Knex, TypeORM, etc) just cannot support all PostgreSQL features because it needs to support other flavors too. While some users may find this trade off acceptable, I always find myself hacking around the tool to use the raw features. Therefore, my ideal environment would be a full-featured PostgreSQL query builder.

TL;DR I see the benefits of Prisma, but they're not for me at this point

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#24

Post by JamesBarney »

ctrlplusb wrote: post #16
snowoutside wrote: post #3

I empathize with the frustration that this library is trying to solve. It's pretty nifty too! Ultimately, however, I don't believe this is the correct approach. The problem with this tool, like every other multi-SQL-flavor-SQL ORM and query builder, is that it requires users to learn yet another language. In addition to Node.js and SQL, users need to learn the Prisma query language. This is not trival, and users that…

I get where you are coming from, but from your comment I am guessing you have yet to try Prisma. I'll speak to my personal experience... I became allergic to ORMs after experiencing much of the pain that you describe. Like you, I quickly found ORMs were simply an additional domain language / abstraction over my database that provided more pain that usefulness. Every time I wanted to make I change to the code I had to…

That sounds awful, and completely different from my experience with ORMs. My experience has almost exclusively been entity framework, which despite having some warts (rank over partition queries are impossible) has been a very pleasant experience.

One advantage is the additional domain language is also the language of array/list manipulation, and not having to maintain any encoders/decoders (I honestly don't know what these are).

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#26

Post by jhanschoo »

I found Prisma 2.0 good for prototyping a service serving a GraphQL-compliant API. One of the features not mentioned here is that it supports a rudimentary form of database query batching (see: https://github.com/prisma/prisma-client-js/issues/153 ), and there seems to be interest in improving it.

This helps one with solving the nplusone problem to some extent without having to maintain code specifically for DataLoader + some orm / custom query code. Comparatively, code via the Prisma Client API is usually straightforward and succinct.

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#27

Post by ctrlplusb »

JamesBarney wrote: post #24
ctrlplusb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you are coming from, but from your comment I am guessing you have yet to try Prisma. I'll speak to my personal experience... I became allergic to ORMs after experiencing much of the pain that you describe. Like you, I quickly found ORMs were simply an additional domain language / abstraction over my database that provided more pain that usefulness. Every time I wanted to make I change to the code I had to…

That sounds awful, and completely different from my experience with ORMs. My experience has almost exclusively been entity framework, which despite having some warts (rank over partition queries are impossible) has been a very pleasant experience. One advantage is the additional domain language is also the language of array/list manipulation, and not having to maintain any encoders/decoders (I honestly don't know wha…

The tax of untyped languages and/or simple/generic API abstractions over databases.

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#28

Post by hokumguru »

agrippanux wrote: post #9
jamil7 wrote: post #4

I don't have my head in backend too much these days and haven't kept up with all of these solutions. It seems like Hasura is the more popular option right now? or do they fit a slightly different space?

Having used both, I would pick Hasura for any project going forward. Time to productivity is so much faster with Hasura and “it just works”. Prisma, at least when I was using it, was introducing breaking changes regularly and whipsawing between major design choices.

I mean... this just now is the production-ready release. Everything for the past year on prisma2 has specifically been labeled as unstable. I wouldn't rag on them too hard for having breaking changes while in an alpha/beta phase.

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#29

Post by flybayer »

I'm super excited about Prisma 2! I feel like we finally have a database client that (1) is/will be very powerful and (2) is very approachable and easy for beginners to learn.

It certainly doesn't replace the need to know some SQL, but it does delay that which is great for so many people.

I'm definitely using this instead of any ORM for every project I can.

I really love having the fully typed interface for Typescript. Both for static type checking and for code completion in your editor.

We are using Prisma 2 as the default database client for Blitz.js [1] which results in a super nice stack. Especially because the Prisma DB types flow all the way into your React components.

[1] https://blitzjs.com

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#30

Post by ctrlplusb »

mesaframe wrote: post #25

It's funny how suddenly everyone is moving towards types. A couple of years back which was frowned upon. And was seen as anti productive.

True. A big appeal for me with TS is that the inference engine is decent, so doesn't feel too ceremonious, and I can also tap out of the type system at any point and write a bit more gnarly code. Typing just the boundaries can be super helpful sometimes.
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