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Datomic is Free

blog.datomic.com

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Re: Datomic is Free

#71

Post by ddellacosta »

endisneigh wrote: post #4

The price is certainly right, but has anyone used this in production? What was your experience like?

My personal experience was using Datomic backed by DynamoDB, at the second Clojure company I worked at. In particular I remember feeling like it was hard to anticipate and understand its performance characteristics in particular, and how indices can be leveraged effectively. Maybe if we had chosen Postgres as a backing store that would have been better? I dunno.

Using it was pretty nice at the scale of a small startup with a motivated team, but scaling it up organizationally-speaking was a challenge due to Datalog's relative idiosyncrasy and poor tooling around the database itself. This was compounded by the parallel challenge of keeping a Clojure codebase from going spaghetti-shaped, which happens in that language when teams scale without a lot of "convention and discipline"--it may be easier to manage otherwise. All of that said, this was years ago so maybe things have changed.

At this point I'd choose either PostgreSQL or SQLite for any project I'm getting started with, as they are both rock-solid, full-featured projects with great tooling and widespread adoption. If things need to scale a basic PostgreSQL setup can usually handle a lot until you need to move to e.g. RDS or whatever, and I'm probably biased but I think SQL is not really that much worse than Datalog for common use-cases. Datalog is nice though, don't get me wrong.

EDIT: one point I forgot to make: the killer feature of being an immutable data store that lets you go back in time is in fact super cool, and it's probably exactly what some organizations need, but it is also costly, and I suspect the number of organizations who really need that functionality is pretty small. The place I was at certainly didn't, which is probably part of the reason for the friction I experienced.

Re: Datomic is Free

#72

Post by xpe »

jchw wrote: post #30

Not complaining about the actual announcement itself here: seems pretty sweet all things considered, But: the "Is it Open Source?" section should lead with "No." It's not a complicated question, and it's not a complicated answer. I think it's weird to talk about having "all the same rights" without explaining why that matters particularly (it does matter, it's just not explained much!) but it is somewhat tangential t…

Saying “no” also would provide a nice opportunity for Nubank to explain why.

To some, the answer is “open source” no matter the question. Hello wagging tail, meet dog.

Re: Datomic is Free

#73

Post by politician »

stefan_ wrote: post #52
martypitt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say the binaries are being made under Apache 2. They don't say anything about the source code being published. That's why (to me) this is so interesting. I've never seen binaries released without source code before.

What is even the point of releasing binaries under Apache 2? When I patch the binaries, do I need to release a hexdiff too to fulfill my Apache obligations? Very weird.

I suppose you could run it through a Java decompiler and clean up the results with an LLM. How long would that take? 5 years to make it useful?

Re: Datomic is Free

#74

Post by foobiekr »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #55
electroly wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone needs to have the working set of your database in memory, why shouldn't it be your app server and business logic? This one confused me. The obvious reason why you don't want the whole working set of your database in the app server's memory is because you have lots of app servers, whereas you only have one database[1]. This suggests that you put the working set of the database in the database , so that you s…

I think the point is that treating your database as an arms-length, RPC component that's independent from your "application" isn't necessarily the only pattern.

Strong agree. there are vast, massive cost savings and performance advantages to be had if the model is that a shard of the dataset is in memory and the data persistence problem is the part that's made external. The only reason we are where we are today is that doing that well is hard.

Re: Datomic is Free

#75

Post by [deleted] »

a2800276 wrote: post #56
lolinder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making your product available for free isn't a publicity stunt, it's a huge step for a business. And, in practice, it's not that much different for the average user if only the binaries are Apache licensed. When was the last time you needed to open up the Postgres source code and modify something?

If it wasn't a publicity stunt, it certainly had the effects of one: I've never heard of Datomic before and here they are at the top of hackernews! > And, in practice, it's not that much different for the average user if only the binaries are Apache licensed. When was the last time you needed to open up the Postgres source code and modify something? Sure, if you're playing a game it probably doesn't make a difference…

[deleted]

Re: Datomic is Free

#76

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #54
adamfeldman wrote: post #3

What is Datomic, you ask? It's a database written in Clojure. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=datomic Datomic is an operational database management system - designed for transactional, domain-specific data. It is not designed to be a data warehouse, nor a high-churn high-throughput system (such as a time-series database or log store). It is a good fit for systems that store valuable information of record, require developer…

For 90% of the web devs that just spin up Postgres/MySQL, why would you use Datomic over that?

[deleted]

Re: Datomic is Free

#77

Post by a2800276 »

lolinder wrote: post #65
a2800276 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't a publicity stunt, it certainly had the effects of one: I've never heard of Datomic before and here they are at the top of hackernews! > And, in practice, it's not that much different for the average user if only the binaries are Apache licensed. When was the last time you needed to open up the Postgres source code and modify something? Sure, if you're playing a game it probably doesn't make a difference…

Again, with your hypotheticals—when was the last time you needed to do any of that with Postgres or another FOSS DBMS? For the vast majority of use cases, a FOSS DBMS and a free-as-in-beer DBMS are indistinguishable. If you're in a category where they're not, then don't use Datomic, but this is still far more than a publicity stunt.

We must be working in a different world. In all my career I've not once worked with a serious business that did not have a support contract for their database system open source or not.

Most of those had escrow agreements for central closed source components with vendors in case the vendor went out of business. (obviously only for things perceived as critical and from companies with some perceived risk of failure).

And god knows how many times have I experienced companies biting themselves because they bought into a product that turned out not to deliver what was promised after the contracts were signed.

Re: Datomic is Free

#78

Post by lebski88 »

fulafel wrote: post #64
motogpjimbo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when you have a legal obligation to delete or anonymise data for some reason?

There's https://docs.datomic.com/pro/reference/excision.html - but like in other data models you also might choose to not store sensitive infromation like PII in cleartext in the main DB at all. At least in earlier versions excision wasn't supported in the Datomic Cloud version.

Excision still isn't supported for cloud, it is / was on their plan but there was never any movement in that direction.

Re: Datomic is Free

#79

Post by rbalicki »

If I recall correctly, Datomic gives you the ability to query the database at a given timestamp. Are there other DBs with this feature that folks are aware of?
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