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PostgreSQL is enough

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Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#91

Post by treflop »

bun_terminator wrote: post #87

As a hardcore c++ guy, I recently switched to a company heavily into databases. I never had contact to databases before. And I'd like to go one step further: Why databases? I come from an industry that heavily uses custom binary file formats. And I'm still bewildered by the world of databases. They seem to solve many issues on the surface, but not really in pratice. The heavy limitations on data types, the update dis…

Well a database is just a binary file format with an API attached on.

Because having hundreds or thousands of concurrent file handles across a data center is kind of hard.

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#92

Post by randomdata »

Ensorceled wrote: post #39
emseetech wrote: post #22

This makes a strong case, but I've decided to start every new project with sqlite and not switch until absolutely necessary. If Postgres is the 90% case, then sqlite is the 80% case and is also dead simple to get going and genuinely performant. So when vertical scaling finally fails me, I know I'll be at a wonderful place with what I'm building.

> [...] sqlite is the 80% case and is also dead simple to get going and genuinely performant. I don't understand this. PostgreSQL is ALSO dead simple to get going, either locally or in production. Why not just start off at 90%? I mean, I get there are a lot of use cases where sqlite is the better choice (and I've used sqlite multiple times over the years, including in my most recent gig), but why in general?

Postgres complicates the application in several ways. In particular, Postgres suffers from the n+1 problem, while SQLite does not. That requires a significant amount of added complexity in the application to hack around. Why over engineer the application before it has proven itself as something anyone even wants to use? Let's face it, the large majority of software written gets thrown away soon after it is created.

I already hear you saying that you know of a library that provides a perfect abstraction to hide all those details and complexities, making the choice between Postgres and SQLite just a flip of a switch away. Great! But then what does Postgres bring to the table for you to choose it over SQLite? If you truly prove a need for it in the future for whatever reason, all you need to do is update the configuration.

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#93

Post by acaloiar »

bun_terminator wrote: post #87

As a hardcore c++ guy, I recently switched to a company heavily into databases. I never had contact to databases before. And I'd like to go one step further: Why databases? I come from an industry that heavily uses custom binary file formats. And I'm still bewildered by the world of databases. They seem to solve many issues on the surface, but not really in pratice. The heavy limitations on data types, the update dis…

It's a decent question. I believe there's a simple answer that explains a large part of the reason people choose databases over flat files. People want ACID compliance _and_ data distribution, and databases are traditionally the only things that provide both.

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#94

Post by wvh »

superb-owl wrote: post #2

I often go down rabbit holes like this, trying to collapse and simplify the application stack. But inevitably, as an application grows in complexity, you start to realize _why_ there's a stack, rather than just a single technology to rule them all. Trying to cram everything into Postgres (or lambdas, or S3, or firebase, or whatever other tech you're trying to consolidate on) starts to get really uncomfortable. That s…

That's a nicely balanced view. I've been working on the intersection between dev, sec and ops for many, many years and one of the most important lessons has been that every dependency is a liability. That liability is either complexity, availability, security, wasting resources or projects or key people disappearing. Do anything to avoid adding more service, library or technology dependencies; if necessary, let people have their side projects and technological playgrounds to distil future stacks out of.

There are good reasons to go OLAP or graph for certain kinds of problems, but think carefully before adding more services and technologies because stuff has a tendency to go in easily but nothing ever leaves a project and you will inevitably end up with a bloated juggernaut that nobody can tame. And it's usually those people pushing the hardest for new technologies that are jumping into new projects when shit starts hitting the fan.

If a company survives long enough (or cough government), a substantial and ever increasing amount of time, money and sec/ops effort will go into those dependencies and complexity cruft.

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#95

Post by bun_terminator »

treflop wrote: post #91
bun_terminator wrote: post #87

As a hardcore c++ guy, I recently switched to a company heavily into databases. I never had contact to databases before. And I'd like to go one step further: Why databases? I come from an industry that heavily uses custom binary file formats. And I'm still bewildered by the world of databases. They seem to solve many issues on the surface, but not really in pratice. The heavy limitations on data types, the update dis…

Well a database is just a binary file format with an API attached on. Because having hundreds or thousands of concurrent file handles across a data center is kind of hard.

ok I get that, but at least our applications usually only have one thing (one thread of one process on one machine) operating on the database. So maybe it's just our silly usecase

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#96

Post by LaGrange »

zwnow wrote: post #81
LaGrange wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it surely will! It will! See, now that we're profitable, we're gonna become a _scale up_, go international, hire 20 developers, turn everything into microservices, rewrite the UI our customers love, _not_ hire more customer service, get more investors, get pressured by investors, hire extra c-levels, lay-off 25 developers and the remaining customer service, write a wonderful journey post. The future is so bright!

Honestly, that's one of the reasons I never want to monetize my work and stay miles away from the software industry. Modern world is all web apps that require you to subscribe to 20 different 3rd party services to even build your app. So you rack up bills before your product is even remotely lucrative... Building an app with no third party dependencies seems impossible nowadays. At least if you plan to compete.

I mean, you _can_ host your staging environment on a Minisforum PC hidden in your closet and then deploy to Hetzner, and probably save a _ton_ unless your service benefits from things like, say, autoscaling or global low-latency access.

Niches where you can get away with that are limited, not just by technical challenges but because large parts of the social ecosystem of IT won't like that. But they do exist. There's also still things that aren't webapps _at all_, there's software that has to run without internet access. It's all far apart and often requires specialized knowledge, but it exists.

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#97

Post by bun_terminator »

acaloiar wrote: post #93
bun_terminator wrote: post #87

As a hardcore c++ guy, I recently switched to a company heavily into databases. I never had contact to databases before. And I'd like to go one step further: Why databases? I come from an industry that heavily uses custom binary file formats. And I'm still bewildered by the world of databases. They seem to solve many issues on the surface, but not really in pratice. The heavy limitations on data types, the update dis…

It's a decent question. I believe there's a simple answer that explains a large part of the reason people choose databases over flat files. People want ACID compliance _and_ data distribution, and databases are traditionally the only things that provide both.

I have never heard the term ACID so I don't believe that's a reason for us at least

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#99

Post by chasd00 »

philippemnoel wrote: post #84

I'm one of the makers of ParadeDB, a modern alternative to Elasticsearch. We build Postgres extensions to do fast search (pg_bm25) and analytics (pg_analytics). I love Postgres. If you have a small workload, like a startup, it certainly makes sense to stay within Postgres as long as you can. The problem is, at scale, Postgres isn't the answer to everything. Each of the workloads one can put in Postgres start to grow…

what is "at scale"? Is there a specific metric or range of metrics that raises a flag to begin considering something else? For example, in the olden days when it was my problem, page load times were the metric. Once it got high enough you looked for the bottleneck, solved it, and waited. When the threshold was broken again you re-ran the same process.

Is there an equivalent for postgres?

Re: PostgreSQL is enough

#100

Post by tangjurine »

randomdata wrote: post #92
Ensorceled wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] sqlite is the 80% case and is also dead simple to get going and genuinely performant. I don't understand this. PostgreSQL is ALSO dead simple to get going, either locally or in production. Why not just start off at 90%? I mean, I get there are a lot of use cases where sqlite is the better choice (and I've used sqlite multiple times over the years, including in my most recent gig), but why in general?

Postgres complicates the application in several ways. In particular, Postgres suffers from the n+1 problem, while SQLite does not. That requires a significant amount of added complexity in the application to hack around. Why over engineer the application before it has proven itself as something anyone even wants to use? Let's face it, the large majority of software written gets thrown away soon after it is created. I…

> Postgres suffers from the n+1 problem, while SQLite does not.

?

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