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Postgres WASM

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Re: Postgres WASM

#112

Post by pistoriusp »

101008 wrote: post #65

Now I only need Django WASM and I can distribute standalone applications :')

Interesting, you're the second person to ask about this! Is there something in Django world that makes standalone application appealing?

Re: Postgres WASM

#113

Post by robertlagrant »

tmpz22 wrote: post #71

I expect to see WASM tooling expose that Google's stewardship of Chromium has left many, many, features to be desired. You can blame it on the bureaucracy and legacy cruft of other companies like Microsoft and Apple, but at the end of the day there's just so much stuff you can't do with web apps (and oh wow just happens to align with Google's Ad and Cloud businesses).

Can you list the features you mean that Firefox and Safari have that the Chromium project has left out because of Google's business interests? Be interesting to see.

Re: Postgres WASM

#114

Post by pistoriusp »

stuaxo wrote: post #99
pistoriusp wrote: post #4

Peter from Snaplet here. A month ago I saw the CrunchyData post and wanted to play around with the code that made it happen, it wasn't OSS so I asked for help: > If anyone out there wants to work on an open source version of this full-time please reach out to me. [0] Paul reached out and we started working on it almost immediately. Check out the repo here: https://github.com/snaplet/postgres-wasm We have a blog post…

Nice, I wonder if anyone has got Django with postgres working in this environment?

I don't see why it wouldn't work! You can exit pg and try it out :P

Re: Postgres WASM

#115

Post by Kye »

There have been a lot of new WASM things popping up on HN. Was there some major new change the enabled all this?

Re: Postgres WASM

#116

Post by fdr »

mockery wrote: post #100
fdr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you need operating system features to run Postgres as-is, e.g. mapping memory, forking processes, manipulating files. What is missing is a WASM kernel that skips the x86 emulation but implements enough of the other stuff. For example, for just one of many hairy problems, consider that Postgres uses global variables in each backend for backend-local state (global state as such is in shared memory). How…

Thanks, those are specific requirements I could definitely see WASM struggling to meet. In my experience in a large+mature enough codebase (particularly one that is already multi-platform, like Postgres appears to be) many of those requirements are wrapped in an abstraction layer to allow targeting new platforms, but some requirements (like memory mapping) could definitely be dealbreakers if the target platform doesn…

I suppose, Postgres is portable, but it's portable to multi-tasking operating systems with virtual memory (which puts in a rather broad category of programs). This goes beyond wrapping how various system calls work on various platforms, but rather changing how accesses are generated, e.g. so backend 1 sees memory location 1 for its global field, backend 2 sees memory location 2 for that same global variable etc. Unlike functions that are frequently wrapped, there is no error code (save ones generated by a processor, e.g. segfault or bus error) or function called for loading an address.

Long story short, I think the need to bypass MMU hardware emulation would prove among the most difficult problems. It will probably require assistance from the compiler, I don't know enough about WASM to guess how mature such relocations would be.

Re: Postgres WASM

#117

Post by andersonmvd »

I was trying to find a way to make apps "data-leak resistant" and one step into this direction was to let the user store the data by bringing his/her own database. I even made a poc https://github.com/andersonDadario/byoda (explanation in the blog post link found on the readme) - but no user would manage his own database. Having a database in the browser opens more possibilities though. I will give it some thought. Looking forward to what else will be built on WASM.

Re: Postgres WASM

#118

Post by tmpz22 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #113
tmpz22 wrote: post #71

I expect to see WASM tooling expose that Google's stewardship of Chromium has left many, many, features to be desired. You can blame it on the bureaucracy and legacy cruft of other companies like Microsoft and Apple, but at the end of the day there's just so much stuff you can't do with web apps (and oh wow just happens to align with Google's Ad and Cloud businesses).

Can you list the features you mean that Firefox and Safari have that the Chromium project has left out because of Google's business interests? Be interesting to see.

My comment doesn't assert Firefox or Safari are ahead on features. My comment is about Google/Chrome still being culpable as a market leader despite Apple (Safari) and Microsoft (IE legacy) likely slowing down browser development in general.

Re: Postgres WASM

#119

Post by unilynx »

andersonmvd wrote: post #117

I was trying to find a way to make apps "data-leak resistant" and one step into this direction was to let the user store the data by bringing his/her own database. I even made a poc https://github.com/andersonDadario/byoda (explanation in the blog post link found on the readme) - but no user would manage his own database. Having a database in the browser opens more possibilities though. I will give it some thought. L…

For that to work you won't even need a database in the user's browser - you could just store an encryption key as a cookie today which you use to encrypt all your serverside data when the user logs in

The real problem is how you deal with the average user (who doesn't really backup properly) losing or crashing their device and thus their encryption key/data. You quickly end up with serverside storage and an email-based password reset again...

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