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Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

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Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#91

Post by dmoose »

kristiandupont wrote: post #74
hbrundage wrote: post #7

Prisma's architecture seems novel and ... a little strange to me. It works by running a Rust engine as a subprocess and then communicating with the engine from JS land over a non-spec compliant GraphQL API. The engine holds the actual databae connection pool and does all the SQL generation and data marshalling. See https://www.prisma.io/docs/reference/tools-and-interfaces/pr... for more info on this arrangement. It h…

I generate Typescript types from my database ([link redacted]) which gives me type safety on back- and frontend without relying on an ORM. I am curious about Prisma but I don't see any advantage to it from my quick skimming.

I do the same using kanel. It's just enough to make the typings smooth without dictating anything else about how they are used. I prefer to write the queries directly in sql using pg-promise and then type the results of the query and the parameters of the query using the output of kanel. Any changes to the db result in generating new typings followed by running the tests to make sure nothing broke.

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#92

Post by nsonha »

olso wrote: post #77
kristiandupont wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generate Typescript types from my database ([link redacted]) which gives me type safety on back- and frontend without relying on an ORM. I am curious about Prisma but I don't see any advantage to it from my quick skimming.

What do you use to write the queries? Some query builder?

knex seems to be what everyone use, has a migration tool too

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#93

Post by [deleted] »

agrippanux wrote: post #9
jamil7 wrote: post #4

I don't have my head in backend too much these days and haven't kept up with all of these solutions. It seems like Hasura is the more popular option right now? or do they fit a slightly different space?

Having used both, I would pick Hasura for any project going forward. Time to productivity is so much faster with Hasura and “it just works”. Prisma, at least when I was using it, was introducing breaking changes regularly and whipsawing between major design choices.

[deleted]

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#94

Post by tango12 »

e12e wrote: post #85
tirumaraiselvan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That setup can be great when your application doesn’t require a lot of business logic and the CRUD capabilities that are exposed in the GraphQL API fit your needs (though I believe you can add business logic in Hasura by integrating serverless functions). (I’m from Hasura) You can extend business logic in Hasura in a number of ways, including (but not exclusively) ones that work well with serverless and async archi…

It's my impression that hasura caters more to (also) those that need to integrate with an existing database and schema, possibly with views and functions - would that be accurate? Does it make sense to slap prisma on top of an existing g production database?

(I'm from Hasura).

It was a definitely a design goal for us to make the existing production database use-cases as seamless as possible.

Instead of adding a new DSL on top of the database, Hasura maps much of the DML subset of SQL over to GraphQL (tables, views, functions) so that we're not re-inventing that bit and the translation is restricted to the "relation set" to "tree" transformation. json aggregation and json operations in Postgres are phenomenal! Hasura's authz RLS-like layer injects authorization in as well to make that GraphQL API actually useful.

JOOQ has probably done the most phenomenal job in mapping almost all database constructs to a native language library, but there's a solid amount of type magic there which I'm not sure is portable to every language.

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#95

Post by nsonha »

nikolasburk wrote: post #8
jamil7 wrote: post #4

I don't have my head in backend too much these days and haven't kept up with all of these solutions. It seems like Hasura is the more popular option right now? or do they fit a slightly different space?

Prisma and Hasura are very different! Prisma is a database toolkit that's used by application developers to develop server-side applications in Node.js and TypeScript (e.g. REST APIs, microservices, gRPC calls, GraphQL APIs, ..., anything that talks to a database). The main tool Prisma Client is a query builder that's used to programmatically send queries to a database from Node.js/TS. Hasura is a "GraphQL-as-a-Servi…

I knew someone was gonna mention Hasura here. What a stupid idea to have API mapped to DB one to one, then solve "the problem" of not being able to write custom logic by inventing some shit (Hasura action). I reckon the reason Prisma pivoted to ORM-alternative was that you realised how wrong such an idea was?

PostGraphile at least has the decency to acknowledge it in their docs[1] and suggest putting logic inside the database (not some "action" nonsense), which is an actual practice, albeit most don't like it. And they don't specifically tell you to hook client directly to the damn generated API!

[1] https://www.graphile.org/postgraphile/evaluating

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#97

Post by albertgao »

snowoutside wrote: post #3

I empathize with the frustration that this library is trying to solve. It's pretty nifty too! Ultimately, however, I don't believe this is the correct approach. The problem with this tool, like every other multi-SQL-flavor-SQL ORM and query builder, is that it requires users to learn yet another language. In addition to Node.js and SQL, users need to learn the Prisma query language. This is not trival, and users that…

You need to try it 1st dude...

There is no query based language, the runtime API is generated from your DB layer, and is fully TS/JS, so there is no new language to learn. It is just TS/JS.

You don't know which API to use? Type a dot and all APIs is there, this is called Intellisense.

So, it is not `like every other multi-SQL-flavor-SQL ORM and query builder`

`I think the best approach to this problem is a single-SQL-flavor query builder that attempts to match SQL as closely as possibly`, you do not work with GraphQL, do you...

Knex. I think Objection.js is much better.

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#98

Post by albertgao »

arxpoetica wrote: post #83
enahs-sf wrote: post #54

Not sure I 100% agree with their problem statement. > the problem: Working with databases is difficult Working with databases is a relatively solved problem. You can access them from just about any language on any platform. A more accurate statement would be: choosing the right access method to work with databases is difficult.

Agree to disagree. For certain kinds of programmers who tend to think more analytically, databases are easy to work with. For those of us who tend to think more visually or kinesthetically, I appreciate tools that are trying to solve problems at a less-lingual/code level.

Isn't a DB naturally embrace 'visually'? I mean, there is a table. Every time I think of a table, I get a picture in my brain... xD

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#99

Post by albertgao »

nikolasburk wrote: post #36
tirumaraiselvan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That setup can be great when your application doesn’t require a lot of business logic and the CRUD capabilities that are exposed in the GraphQL API fit your needs (though I believe you can add business logic in Hasura by integrating serverless functions). (I’m from Hasura) You can extend business logic in Hasura in a number of ways, including (but not exclusively) ones that work well with serverless and async archi…

Thanks a lot for the clarification, Tirumarai! (Remote JOINs look awesome btw, congrats on the release :)

I love both Prisma 2 and Hasura! 2 awesome products!

Re: Prisma 2.0 – Type-safe and auto-generated database client

#100

Post by albertgao »

ogre_codes wrote: post #90

I love the idea of a type safe interface to a database, but I'll pass on learning yet another DSL. Seems like inevitably you get to a certain complexity and the DSL just falls apart and you wind up writing SQL regardless. Then you end up with half your queries written in one language (SQL) and the other half in the ORM DSL. SQL isn't that hard and if you are using a SQL database, you can't really escape knowing the c…

the DSL is only for table management, and pretty similar to GraphQL type definition

The ORM layer is not a DSL but some nicely done JS/TS functions

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