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Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

edgedb.com

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Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#101
post #89

Hell yeah. This is what I've wanted ever since I first learned about Apple's CoreData. This seems great. I have a highly interrelated data model (think parsed natural language text with annotations), and writing SQL to keep all of that data aligned and synced is a pain with an ORM. Am I right in imagining this works similarly to how Apple's CoreData does? It lets you build objects linked to each other but handles all…

I'm not too familiar with the CoreData API, but from a quick googling it seems like this is some sort of an ORM on top of SQLite. We position EdgeDB as a database server, not a library, partly because you can interact with it from different programming languages. But we design our client library with focus on API composability, check out our edgedb-js library for example: https://www.edgedb.com/docs/clients/01_js/ind…

Right, but conceptually the way you interact with it is the same. I'm not trying to belittle what you've done. I'm in fact very excited about it.

And EdgeDB is very needed because it's just an Apple library currently.

Conceptually, my impression is that EdgeDb is relational tables (highly-typed) queried, combined, and modeled as nodes in a graph/tree. Is that conceptually correct?

I don't, but I would like to if I could deploy Swift code to Azure. I love Swift as a language.

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#102
post #84

These guys are from magic stack, they wrote the definitive async python postgres library, asyncpg. Very high quality library. Been keeping a close eye on Edge, had even considered it as a primary database, and probably will in the future!! As much as I adore the ergonomics improvements I really am more interested in the performance, replication, scalability story, with the likes of cockroach db reaching maturity in 2…

Been searching for something just like this for my next moonshot project. Very excited!!!

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#103

I only glanced through this, but would you say there’s some vague similarities (ignoring the distributed/caching aspects) to Facebook’s TAO here? For example, as a user of this, would I have to care about the Postgres schema, or is that abstracted away from me? (Tao uses mysql and stores graph data as pretty much key/value pairs, and then a layer on top to query it)

There are similarities with TAO and it's not a coincidence. Facebook engineers recognized that a better data abstraction and API was needed for productivity. EdgeDB follows the same logic.

> would I have to care about the Postgres schema, or is that abstracted away from me?

EdgeDB takes care of everything for you. You wouldn't know it's Postgres underneath unless we told you.

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#105
post #99

Why a new language? I can see and understand why and where graphs beat out SQL, but what does EdgeQL have over existing graph languages? Eg. vs Cypher or the likely-Cypher-compatible forthcoming GQL standard? https://www.gqlstandards.org/

Forthcoming? Given that the last sign of live has been from 3 years ago in a space with already little movement GQL seems to be most likely dead.

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#106
post #93

> EdgeDB is built on top of Postgres How it is a new database? Or an advanced orm?

We're working on a more comprehensive explanation of why EdgeDB isn't an ORM. Does EdgeDB do "object-relational mapping" under the hood — absolutely. The reason we try to distance ourselves from the category of ORMs is that the term "ORM" comes with a big bag of preconceptions that don't apply here. EdgeDB has:

- Full schema model with indexing, constraints, defaults, computed properties, stored procedures

- A query language that replaces SQL. If there's something you can do in SQL that isn't possible in EdgeQL, it's a bug. Most ORMS provide some sort of language-specific API for writing queries and generating SQL under the hood—that's dramatically different than providing a new query language.

- A full type system, grammar, set of functions and operators, etc. A set theoretic basis for all expressions in EdgeQL. https://www.edgedb.com/docs/edgeql/sets

- A set of drivers for different languages that implement our binary protocol.

EdgeDB is a new abstraction built on a lower-level abstraction: Postgres. Both indubitably fit any reasonable definition of "database".

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#107

I only glanced through this, but would you say there’s some vague similarities (ignoring the distributed/caching aspects) to Facebook’s TAO here? For example, as a user of this, would I have to care about the Postgres schema, or is that abstracted away from me? (Tao uses mysql and stores graph data as pretty much key/value pairs, and then a layer on top to query it)

We fully manage the underlying SQL schema for you, it's abstracted away (which will allow us to pull some tricks when we eventually introduce live schema migrations).

I haven't worked at Facebook so I'm not super familiar with TAO, only heard about it from my friends. But sometimes I pitch EdgeDB as a database with which you don't need to build your own TAO at your company. we give you much more capabilities than a typical database.

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're working on a more comprehensive explanation of why EdgeDB isn't an ORM. Does EdgeDB do "object-relational mapping" under the hood — absolutely. The reason we try to distance ourselves from the category of ORMs is that the term "ORM" comes with a big bag of preconceptions that don't apply here. EdgeDB has: - Full schema model with indexing, constraints, defaults, computed properties, stored procedures - A query…

How exactly is EdgeDB run? Is it a separate process from Postgres, or some kind of plugin? Can I run it over an existing Postgres instance? If I build a DB Schema in EdgeDB, can I interact with the underlying Postgres instance using regular SQL?

It runs as a separate (stateless) process between the client and the PostgreSQL server. There was a talk about the details of the architecture on the live stream today: https://youtu.be/WRZ3o-NsU_4?t=5294

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#110

Orientdb is also sql like syntax graph database with way more traction. So this is not the first attempt at this type of databases.

I'll cite my other comment from this thread:

OrientDB positions itself as a multi-model NoSQL database. Where's EdgeDB positions itself as a relational database and a successor of SQL.

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