Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do you even need a database?

dbpro.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 311 posts

Re: Do you even need a database?

#61

Post by forinti »

da02 wrote: post #60
forinti wrote: post #24

Many eons ago I wrote a small sales web application in Perl. I couldn't install anything on the ISP's machine, so I used file-backed hashes: one for users, one for orders, another for something else. As the years went by, I expected the client to move to something better, but he just stuck with it until he died after about 20 years, the family took over and had everything redone (it now runs Wordpress). The last time…

What type of product or service were they selling?

A calendar for cutting your hair according to the phases of the moon.

Re: Do you even need a database?

#62

Post by wmanley »

9rx wrote: post #53
RL2024 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true but relying on a highly tested component like SQLite means that you can focus your tests on the interface and your business logic, i.e. you can test that you are persisting to the your datastore rather than testing that your datastore implementation is valid.

Your business logic tests will already, by osmosis, exercise the backing data store in every conceivable way to the fundamental extent that is possible with testing given finite time. If that's not the case, your business logic tests have cases that have been overlooked. Choosing SQLite does mean that it will also be tested for code paths that your application will never touch, but who cares about that? It makes no d…

Business logic tests will rarely test what happens to your data if a machine loses power.

Re: Do you even need a database?

#63

Post by rglover »

A few months back I decided to write an embedded db for my firm's internal JS framework. Learned a lot about how/why databases work the way they do. I use stuff like reading memory cached markdown files for static sites, but there are certain things that a database gives you (chief of which for me was query ergonomics—I loved MongoDB's query language but grew too frustrated with the actual runtime) that you'll miss once you move past a trivial data set.

I think a better way to ask this question is "does this application and its constraints necessitate a database? And if so, which database is the correct tool for this context?"

Re: Do you even need a database?

#64

Post by hooverd »

upmostly wrote: post #15
vovanidze wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

props for actually publishing it tbh. transparent engineering takes are so rare now, usually its just seo fluff. weve basically been brainwashed to think we need kubernetes and 3 different databases just to serve a few thousand users. gotta burn those startup cloud credits somehow i guess. mad respect for the honesty though, actually makes me want to check out db pro when i finally outgrow my flat files.

I'm feel like I could write another post: Do you even need serverless/Cloud because we've also been brainwashed into thinking we need to spend hundreds/thousands a month on AWS when a tiny VPS will do. Similar sentiment.

Serverless is cheap as hell as low volumes. Your tiny VPS can't scale to zero. If you're doing sustained traffic your tiny VPS might win though. The real value in Cloud is turning capex spend into opex spend. You don't have to wait weeks or months to requisition equipment.

Re: Do you even need a database?

#67

Post by 9rx »

wmanley wrote: post #62
9rx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your business logic tests will already, by osmosis, exercise the backing data store in every conceivable way to the fundamental extent that is possible with testing given finite time. If that's not the case, your business logic tests have cases that have been overlooked. Choosing SQLite does mean that it will also be tested for code paths that your application will never touch, but who cares about that? It makes no d…

Business logic tests will rarely test what happens to your data if a machine loses power.

Then your business logic contains unspecified behaviour. Maybe you have a business situation where power loss conditions being unspecified is perfectly acceptable, but if that is so it doesn't really matter what happens to your backing data store either.

Re: Do you even need a database?

#68

Post by pgtan »

noveltyaccount wrote: post #25
z3ugma wrote: post #8

At some point, don't you just end up making a low-quality, poorly-tested reinvention of SQLite by doing this and adding features?

As soon as you need to do a JOIN, you're either rewriting a database or replatforming on Sqlite.

Here are two checks using joins, one with sqlite, one with the join builtin of ksh93:

  check_empty_vhosts () {
    # Check which vhost adapter doesn't have any VTD mapped
    start_sqlite
    tosql "SELECT l.vios_name,l.vadapter_name FROM vios_vadapter AS l
        LEFT OUTER JOIN vios_wwn_disk_vadapter_vtd AS r
    USING (vadapter_name,vios_name)
    WHERE r.vadapter_name IS NULL AND
      r.vios_name IS NULL AND
   l.vadapter_name LIKE 'vhost%';"
    endsql
    getsql
    stop_sqlite
  }

  check_empty_vhosts_sh () {
    # same as above, but on the shell
    join  -v 1  -t , -1 1 -2 1 \

Re: Do you even need a database?

#69

Post by bachmeier »

z3ugma wrote: post #8

At some point, don't you just end up making a low-quality, poorly-tested reinvention of SQLite by doing this and adding features?

Based on what's in the article, it wouldn't take much to move these files to SQLite or any other database in the future.

Edit: I just submitted a link to Joe Armstrong's Minimum Viable Programs article from 2014. If the response to my comment is about the enterprise and imaginary scaling problems, realize that those situations don't apply to some programming problems.

Post reply on HN