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PlanetScale – Database for Developers

planetscale.com

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Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#121

Post by shlomi-noach »

lysecret wrote: post #118
Aeolun wrote: post #91

> Developers want the durability, stability, and scalability of a SQL database but do not want to be constrained by managing a schema Speak for yourself. I love my schemas. This article is also 100% fluff, and zero actual information. Obviously I won’t sign up to anything without an ounce of information being provided up front.

Haha that's actually a good point. I love to have a reference for how my data is structured.

Per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27203568, there is a a normal MySQL schema. This is about how PlanetScale solves the schema management friction, so as to enable developers working with schemas: safe branching, online schema changes, deployment queues, protected branches, conflict resolution. (I'm an engineer at PlanetScale)

Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#122

Post by shlomi-noach »

halostatue wrote: post #53

Amy I the only person reading this who doesn’t think that the marketing line in the middle about not managing a schema is super scary? > Developers want the durability, stability, and scalability of a SQL database but do not want to be constrained by managing a schema. It has been our goal to give both, not compromising on the power of your datastore but making changes feel as easy as deploying code. Sorry. There’s a…

There is always a schema, and PlanetScale, in particular, promotes the use of schemas. That is, behind the scenes we operate Vitess, which is an infrastructure and sharding framework on top of MySQL. You will create schemas in PlanetScale just as you would in MySQL. Managing the schema, though: operating schema changes in code and in production, mitigating schema conflicts, scheduling migrations, running online migrations, experimenting with schema changes, etc., are something relational databases don't provide the right (or any) tooling for developers, and this is one of the things PlanetScale aims to bring to developers.

In my past experience as a production engineer, and in our many discussions within the community, we've seen many approaches developers take just to avoid the hassle of running yet another ALTER TABLE; whether because it requires going through a different team, or because this poses an availability risk, etc. PlanetScale offers to bring ownership back in the developer's hands.

Hope this clarifies. We'll publish more soon, and I'll be able to provide more links.

(I'm an engineer at PlanetScale)

(Edit for grammar/typos)

Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#123

Post by k__ »

tasuki wrote: post #120
k__ wrote: post #71

I'm currently searching for a serverless database for my next project and will look into it. I already played around with Upstash and Fauna. Somehow the signup shows an 422 error, then I get an confirmation email that leads to a blank page.

What is a serverless database and why are you searching for one for your next project?

A managed database thats automatically scales horizontally and is priced on-demand.

I want it for my next project, because I don't want to pay for what I don't use, but also don't want to provision or maintain additional instances manually.

Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#125

Post by ksec »

NAR8789 wrote: post #33
vira28 wrote: post #25

Wondering will we see something like this for Postgres? I like the cool things but I can’t migrate to MySQL just because of this.

looks like it's a ways off... planetscale says they're built on vitess, and vitess has postgres compatibility at the bottom of their "Medium Term" roadmap: https://vitess.io/docs/resources/roadmap/

It has been there for two plus years with very little news and development. I wouldn't expect it to be done in another 3-4 years.

Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#126

Post by ksec »

Am I the only finding it extremely light on useful information? And after reading all the comments here those questions are still not answered.

Basically a Hosted Vitess with MySQL? Where is DC? Backup included? Redundancy? Spending Cap? Own Infrastructure or on top of other Cloud ? Support Level? Uptime Guarantee? etc etc.

All of these are basic info required from a SaaS, and they are missing. Not even a FAQ.

Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#127

Post by Aeolun »

lizztheblizz wrote: post #97
Aeolun wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once you have the infrastructure up and running with a compatible schema design, there's not too much to worry about from a coding standpoint Isn’t that the same for a normal sharded MySQL database though?

Depends. Have any examples of "normal" sharded MySQL databases? EDIT: To clarify, sharding is not a standard feature included in Community Edition MySQL. Over the years, there have been various Oracle-initiated attempts at providing it as an enterprise scaling strategy through MySQL (NDB) Cluster, MySQL Fabric, etc., but these have either ended up having limited applicability outside very specific use cases and are n…

Damn, I never knew this. I think the first time I ever needed sharding it was just available in whatever version of MySQL we were using at the time (through some plugin, presumably). I never needed it again and ever since just assumed it was the default.

Thanks for the correction!

Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#128

Post by tasuki »

k__ wrote: post #123
tasuki wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a serverless database and why are you searching for one for your next project?

A managed database thats automatically scales horizontally and is priced on-demand. I want it for my next project, because I don't want to pay for what I don't use, but also don't want to provision or maintain additional instances manually.

Explanation at the exact level of detail I wanted - thank you :)

Re: PlanetScale – Database for Developers

#130

Post by unknown_error »

paxys wrote: post #39
unknown_error wrote: post #34

Can someone please explain how Vitess works, in plain English? How does it magically make MySQL scale? And then what does PlanetScale add on top of Vitess hosted anywhere else? Sorry, the linked blog post is both very abstract and assumes a high level of preexisting knowledge about database scaling.

Vitess is an additional layer on top of MySQL which all queries pass though. Among other things, it implements its own query parser which can then do stuff like split a query across shards and join results etc. I wouldn't say there's too much "magic" in there, but it does a lot of known difficult things (schema management, sharding/resharding, connection pooling, query optimization, DB administration, monitoring, bac…

Hmm, so in a way, it's kinda like a CDN for a database?
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