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Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

supabase.io

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Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#181

Post by bavell »

pm90 wrote: post #155
RNCTX wrote: post #129

I see from the links that this is probably borrowing a bit from Postgrest? I've just discovered Postgrest in the past few days and along with Postgraphile it seems like all of these projects aimed at "getting back to the database" are a good idea, I like it. It always bothered me that the first order of business with any software development framework was to provide a root/admin database connection. It's like, this t…

I may be wrong about the history of security work on databases (feel free to correct me!) , but I think the security model was built mostly for an age where a single DB would be used by many apps, thus access control at the DB level seemed natural to the DB admins. Today, with managed/containerized DBs and Microservices and share nothing architecture, I’ve seen most apps use their own database instance, in which case…

I'm curious to hear what others think about this as well. I run some WordPress sites in containers and I give each one it's own DB instance. I just create the root account with a strong password, give it to WordPress and call it a day. Makes ops much simpler although it's probably not the best use of resources (e.g. memory).

Any big downsides to doing things this way? I'm no DBA so I appreciate any insights.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#182

Post by sparkie »

mav3rick wrote: post #115
punnerud wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebase smell the Google Maps model with its “free” for a long time plan, before turning up the price when most of the market is used to the product and are to deeply locked to the API.

Why shouldn't they charge for a great product ? When Google charges it's a problem when they don't charge it's a problem.

The problem is they've forced people to use the product by hindering their ability to run background services without it. Since Oreo, background services are turned to idle unless they receive high priority push notifications from FCM.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#183

Post by gitgud »

To be a Firebase alternative, you would expect a full-stack solution; DB, Auth, Cloud Functions, Analytics...etc. That's the main selling point of Firebase.

This just seems to be an Open-Source implementation of Firebase's "Realtime Database", which is kind of superseded by the new "Firestore", which is much more popular.

However it's a smart business move, as many products are locked into the "Realtime Database", so this could provide an easy exit door to Open-Source software.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#184

Post by PKop »

praveenweb wrote: post #37
aman-pro wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Hasura your still need a 3rd party service such as Firebase or 0Auth for Authentication. Also, it depends on Serverless functions for doing any business logic.

This is a misconception. Hasura doesn’t depend on serverless functions for doing business logic. If you are comfortable writing GraphQL, you can add your own custom GraphQL server to Hasura for business logic. If you are comfortable with REST APIs (or something that already exists), you can use Hasura Actions to define GraphQL types and call your REST endpoint to perform business logic. Now where this server is hoste…

Perhaps what they meant is it requires application code (server or severless) for business logic mutations, instead of surfacing database functions as RPC.

This was the particular reason I moved away from Hasura. Business logic mutations in SQL are too powerful to give up and replace with JavaScript in opinion.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#185

Post by bavell »

RNCTX wrote: post #179
pm90 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be wrong about the history of security work on databases (feel free to correct me!) , but I think the security model was built mostly for an age where a single DB would be used by many apps, thus access control at the DB level seemed natural to the DB admins. Today, with managed/containerized DBs and Microservices and share nothing architecture, I’ve seen most apps use their own database instance, in which case…

Not every database application is a public facing web application. Think about, for instance, a company's internal customer database (including billing, etc), accessed with internal tools. CSR/Support people need to be able to see billing status but not credit card numbers, for example. Different levels of management need to be able to generate reports, but again not get credit card numbers. For these use cases the o…

What are the pros/cons of using entirely different (siloed) databases with uniform permissions instead of a single database supporting granular permissions?

Off the top of my head, I'd say security might be improved but ease of use may suffer. Interested in hearing other's thoughts on the matter.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#186

Post by kiwicopple »

habosa wrote: post #149

Disclaimer: I work on Firebase but I'm always speaking for myself on Hacker News. This looks really cool! Honestly I think the Firebase comparison may be throwing some people off here because this is a SQL-based system, which means there's a huge base of existing tools/techniques/knowledge to build from. I like any tool which makes it easier to build an app. It's 2020 and we still start every app like this: * Pick a…

> Honestly I think the Firebase comparison may be throwing some people off here because this is a SQL-based system

You're correct - we're building on top of Postgres so it's not a perfect comparison. And we're a bit early to even make it a fair claim.

I'm glad the crowd here has been so receptive. We were planning of launching in September, but it must have been picked up somewhere on the internet (thanks @habosa)

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#188

Post by Hoenoe »

rhlsthrm wrote: post #134
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #97

A bit of a plug, but if you wish for something that has the Postgres reliability, the taste of nosql but with strong typing and a json output a la graphql, give a try to edge db: https://edgedb.com The team behind it is awesome (one is a python core dev), and it's a FOSS, but they have been using it internally for some time.

I feel like this is close to what I'm looking for but not quite there in terms of minimal boilerplate backend. Basically what I want to do is write a GraphQL schema and have that be the ultimate source of truth. The schema then should generate the full DB (honestly I don't even care if it's SQL, NoSQL, etc. the idea is that part is abstracted away). Then the schema can generate fully typesafe queries for the front en…

Checkout: https://prisma.io

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#189

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

punnerud wrote: post #111
DigitalSea wrote: post #104

I am ecstatic that someone is finally taking on Firebase. As a Firebase user, I find it invaluable. Their free plan and limits are very generous. The fact they offer not only a database, but authentication, hosting and perhaps one of their biggest features besides authentication: Firebase Functions. I have API's in deployment that are solely running using Firebase Functions and using Firestore as the database. The CL…

Firebase smell the Google Maps model with its “free” for a long time plan, before turning up the price when most of the market is used to the product and are to deeply locked to the API.

Just this year, Google/firebase has dropped their flat monthly fee plan which increased the spark plans limits. Just this week cloud functions have been removed from the free spark plan, which will break a lot of peoples apps.

These decisions are alienating to me. I've been working on migrating my heroku mern stack app to firebase but now I'm having serious second thoughts. I was initially attracted by the free and flat fee plans. I won't ever sign up for a service that demands absolute liability without any way to put hard limits on expense. Without a way to put an absolute maximum limit on expenses, whether $10k or 0.01, I'll never upgrade my account on firebase.

I've spent this week reviewing some alternatives and standing up everything myself on a vps is more attractive then losing sleep over the possibility of my crappy code bankrupting me on firebase.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative

#190

Post by sparkie »

Tostino wrote: post #172
sauwan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one's saying they shouldn't. If the current business model isn't sustainable, then it's a predatory lock-in scheme to monopolize the market and then take advantage of the people who've become dependant on your product.

Couldn't agree more. If major price changes are required to make the product work well after customers have been "enticed" in with a reasonable cost, it is underhanded to say the least.

It's more than just "entice". Google has crippled apps which don't use FCM since Oreo by limiting their ability to run alternatives which have a blocking socket waiting for new information. Only choice is to use FCM or lose essential functionality.
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