Dropbox-as-a-Database • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#11

Post by Supreme » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 4:19 PM UTC

gdp wrote: post #4

It seems rather generous to call this a database. It's files on a filesystem. The lack of any kind of transactional consistency guarantees (Dropbox is notoriously awful at this), and the lack of any sane mechanism for querying this "database" means that it's just "data", not a "database".

In the world of SaaS, social media, NoSQL and NodeJS, everything which has already been thought of and brought to maturity is suddenly new, shiny, incomplete, buggy and has a new name. It's a brave new world - enjoy your stay.

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#12

Post by yefrederic » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 4:33 PM UTC

formatjam wrote: post #7

Actually I have the exact same idea like a few weeks ago. The potential for this idea is big. It can be widely used by small web apps (Chrome App). Instead of hosting a server and a database, every thing can be done and stored in the client, isn't that neat?

You should have a look at filepicker.io then

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#13

Post by ehutch79 » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #6

Your blog design is bad btw, popout at side overlays scroll bar in Windows/Chrome.

Plus, i can barely read the text.

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#14

Post by mistercow » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 4:51 PM UTC

gdp wrote: post #4

It seems rather generous to call this a database. It's files on a filesystem. The lack of any kind of transactional consistency guarantees (Dropbox is notoriously awful at this), and the lack of any sane mechanism for querying this "database" means that it's just "data", not a "database".

Transactions are not a requirement for databases, and querying is the domain of the DBMS, not the database itself.

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#15

Post by bduerst » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 5:04 PM UTC

yefrederic wrote: post #8

mattmanser wrote: post #6

Your blog design is bad btw, popout at side overlays scroll bar in Windows/Chrome.

It's one of the design proposed by Google, blame them :)

Google isn't the one using it to demonstrate their work as a developer ;-)

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#16

Post by bduerst » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 5:07 PM UTC

sehugg wrote: post #5

Reminds me of the GMail filesystem: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#17

Post by taskstrike » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 5:32 PM UTC

Dropbox as a database is a actually great idea. It takes away scaling problems from the developer and puts the data control back to the user.

I'm actually working on NimbusBase, a product that allows you to write clientside javascript applications where there is no server code and data is stored inside of Dropbox. It also integrates with backbone.

Shameless plug: sign up for our beta! http://nimbusbase.com

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#18

Post by pencilcode » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 5:39 PM UTC

is this part of the app open-sourced? it's a great idea.

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#19

Post by ananddass » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 5:52 PM UTC

formatjam wrote: post #7

Actually I have the exact same idea like a few weeks ago. The potential for this idea is big. It can be widely used by small web apps (Chrome App). Instead of hosting a server and a database, every thing can be done and stored in the client, isn't that neat?

as yefrederic pointed out you could use filepicker.io to build static js applications. We handle all the server side logic for you.

Re: Dropbox-as-a-Database

#20

Post by Erwin » Wed, Oct 31, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

tarr11 wrote: post #3

It is a fun exercise to do these kinds of things. Obviously, they are very inefficient. But that is not the point! Perhaps there's some residual value related to some Dropbox feature (such as automatic replication) that makes this useful . But that is countered by getting your account rate-limited by Dropbox. I wonder, is there some way to create a key-value store out of any physical or virtual object that can store…

Humanity as a database: after infiltrating a religious order mandate arranged marriages encoding your input data in predicted genetic mutations of offspring. Ensure the religious order is hermetic so no outside data appears and that its teaching require all members to appear at a certain location at a certain time. Retrieve your data 1000 years later by appearing at the preordained spot for the Holy Query Ceremony, and examining the eye/hair colours of those gathered. Good error correction protocols are required. (This might well already be part of a Neal Stephenson novel).