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Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

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Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#231

Post by 1st1 »

person3 wrote: post #213

This seems kind of cool, but honestly the benefits described don't really solve actual problems I've run into in development. The overall article reads like marketing talk and doesn't actually describe concretely why it's better than existing solutions. For something as core as a database I would expect more rigorous descriptions and benchmarks. > We shall do better than SQL The EdgeQL language looks cool, and I'm su…

>> We shall do better than SQL

> The EdgeQL language looks cool, and I'm sure querying via a graph structure makes certain problems easier in some use cases. However as much as people have complained about SQL, it's just so ubiquitous there needs to be a very good reason to switch away from it. Not having to write joins isn't really a good enough reason, in my opinion.

Oh, it goes much deeper than not writing joins. There's no single ORM out there that can implement a TypeScript query builder like ours, see the example in [1]. This is only possible because of EdgeQL composability, but that composability required us to rethink the entire relational foundation.

> > The true source of truth

> I'm not sure why this means EdgeDB is better.

This section implies that EdgeDB's schema allows to specify a lot of meta / dynamically computed information in it. And soon your access control policies. Take a look at the work-in-progress RFC [2] [3] to see how this is more powerful, then say, Postgres' row level security.

> > Not just a database server

> It sounds like they have a solid client, which is awesome.

Also lightweight connections to the DB so that you can have thousands of concurrent ones without load balancers, built-in schema migrations engine, and many other things. In fact we have so much that it's challenging what to even highlight in a blog post like the 1.0 announcement.

> Cloud-ready database APIs

> This used to be true, but is definitely no longer true. Cloud-native databases are everywhere and incredibly common. See any major cloud, https://www.cockroachlabs.com/, or any of the tons of other database solutions.

Not to pick on CockroachDB (they have an amazing product and company, we love them), but you should benchmark local install of Postgres and Cockroach to see yourself that scalability still has a significant cost in performance.

[1] https://www.edgedb.com/blog/edgedb-1-0#not-just-a-database-s...

[2] https://github.com/edgedb/rfcs/pull/49

[3] https://github.com/edgedb/rfcs/pull/50/files

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#232

Post by democracy »

person3 wrote: post #213

This seems kind of cool, but honestly the benefits described don't really solve actual problems I've run into in development. The overall article reads like marketing talk and doesn't actually describe concretely why it's better than existing solutions. For something as core as a database I would expect more rigorous descriptions and benchmarks. > We shall do better than SQL The EdgeQL language looks cool, and I'm su…

Yeah, to me it also sounded like another graph plugin for a popular RDBMS. I also didn't find the examples convincing. Not having a driver for #Net/Java?

To me the problems with existing DBMS are still the same (as 15 years ago) complexities in setup/clustering/backups/rollbacks/schema updates, even setting up db clients are PITAs in many environments.

SQL is not really a feature to focus on (imho), it is simple enough even for non-tech people). We tried to get out of SQL long time ago anyways (ORM).

Anyways wishing luck, the team seems awesome!

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#233

Post by Aeolun »

RedCrowbar wrote: post #39
samhw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, it stores the data in Postgres? So this is essentially a data model on Postgres? FWIW, I do think there's a space in the market for a thin wrapper over Postgres (or MySQL) which would automate certain optimisations such as whether to index a particular table. It always struck me as perverse that that optimisation was delegated to the developer, when it's no more subjective or application-specific than a thousan…

It's built on Postgres, but it isn't a _thin_ wrapper. We lean hard into Postgres query machinery and type system in order to pull off EdgeQL and graph-relational efficiently.

Does this mean that at the end it submits SQL queries to postgres? Or is the integration deeper?

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#235

Post by [deleted] »

RedCrowbar wrote: post #23
rahimiali wrote: post #18

Could someone explain what a graph-relational database is? I'm not able to extract a technical definition from the paragraph below: "What is a graph-relational database? EdgeDB is built on an extension of the relational data model that we call the graph-relational model. This model completely eliminates the object-relational impedance mismatch while retaining the solid basis of and performance of the classic relation…

(EdgeDB CTO here) In a classic relational model everything is a tuple containing scalar values. Graph-relational extends the relational data model in three ways: - every relation always has a global immutable key independent of data (explicit autoincrement keys aren't needed) - this enables us to add a "reference type", which is essentially a pointer to some other record (i.e. a foreign key) - attributes can be set-v…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#236

Post by RedCrowbar »

Aeolun wrote: post #233
RedCrowbar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's built on Postgres, but it isn't a _thin_ wrapper. We lean hard into Postgres query machinery and type system in order to pull off EdgeQL and graph-relational efficiently.

Does this mean that at the end it submits SQL queries to postgres? Or is the integration deeper?

We compile EdgeQL queries into SQL currently, because it makes the architecture simpler and less us run on unmodifed Postgres, but conceptually nothing stops us from targeting the query planner directly via an extension or an alternative frontend that consumes EdgeQL IR direclty.

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#237

Post by wilg »

colinmcd wrote: post #173
solarmist wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

That's correct! Though that's true for most ORMs as well, and we try not to get lumped into the ORM bucket...too much bad blood. I've dabbled with CoreData myself and it's a phenomenal API. Apple comes up with a lot of great stuff. In fact, given how much server-side Swift there is these days, we'll have to look into building a Swift client library at some point.

Would also love to try this in Swift!

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#238

Post by wilg »

imilk wrote: post #158
Trufa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a terrible attitude to have, that's truly the worst possible interpretation. How's that dissing anything? They are saying they have a good abstraction that will make you more productive. While it might not be, this is literally what makes software the amazing tool it is, building layers of abstraction that make you more productive. You seem to have gotten it all wrong, how could building something on top of SQL…

It's very frustrating that whenever a team is showing something new they've built to HN, so many of the top comments are focused some incredibly nitpicky, personal issue that somehow negates everything else about the project. It's an amazingly lazy and inconsiderate way to respond to people who've put a bunch of effort into building something.

It's at least partially a programmer thing, basically bikeshedding. Just imagine doing a code review with some of these commenters!

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#239

Post by pier25 »

Why is it called Edge though?

I immediately assumed it was some kind of distributed db running at the edge but it seems this is not the case.

Re: Show HN: EdgeDB 1.0

#240

Post by wilg »

torartc wrote: post #132
thatwasunusual wrote: post #69

> We should not continue wasting our productivity with a database API architecture from the last century. Sorry, but dissing proven technology like this just makes me vomit. Show me _how_ you can beat SQL in performance and features on the frontpage, or I'm just happy to go along with what I already have.

Makes you want to vomit? That's a bit over the top.

Not want to vomit, actually vomit. Apparently.
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