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Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

prisma.io

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Re: Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

#91

Post by parhamn »

skrebbel wrote: post #88

IMO any discussion about Node/TypeScript data access tools deserves a reference to Zapatos, which sort of is the anti-Prisma. It has all the type safety with none of the ORM (and it's Postgres-specific, for better and worse). I think it's got one of the best designed APIs I've come across. https://jawj.github.io/zapatos/

> prioritis[ing] ease of switching to another database tomorrow over effective use of this database today, are a source of misery.

hah. This looks cool, thanks for sharing!

Re: Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

#92

Post by nikolasburk »

skrebbel wrote: post #88

IMO any discussion about Node/TypeScript data access tools deserves a reference to Zapatos, which sort of is the anti-Prisma. It has all the type safety with none of the ORM (and it's Postgres-specific, for better and worse). I think it's got one of the best designed APIs I've come across. https://jawj.github.io/zapatos/

Fully agree, Zapatos is super nice – and so are similar tools like pgtyped and Slonik. We actually mention all these in our docs here: https://www.prisma.io/docs/concepts/overview/should-you-use-...

I think the main difference of these libraries compared to Prisma is the level of abstraction. If you want to work with SQL and you appreciate type-safety, then all of these tools will be fabulous options for you! If you want to work on a somewhat higher level of abstraction but still have full type-safety, Prisma will be more appropriate.

Re: Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

#94

Post by sonthonax »

spion wrote: post #85
abraxas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think SQL gets a lot of undeserved praise that I’m having a difficult time understanding. The only impressive thing about SQL is its prevalence but that’s a pretty poor yardstick unless one thinks that an appeal to popularity is an indicator of quality. Now let me count the ways in which SQL is bad: - it composes poorly due to its unwieldy cobolesque syntax - it is a leaky abstraction revealing a lot of underlying…

What are you comparing it to? What is the better alternative?

SQL isn't the only RDMS language, but it is the one with 50 years of incumbency.

Postgres before it was called 'PostgreSQL', used something called QUEL, which is quite a bit cleaner. There is also Microsoft's LINQ.

A typical programming language can express all that SQL can. In a way, an ORM is a cross-compiler from your programming language to SQL.

Re: Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

#95

Post by Frost1x »

ragnese wrote: post #55
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #3

“ Application developers should care about data – not SQL” Anyone who has been bitten by an ORM generating inefficient SQL (and subsequent having to learn and care about SQL) knows the above not to be true.

The statement is true, IMO. The problem is that ORMs don't ever solve the problem (and I don't believe they CAN). We should only have to care about data and not SQL. But the reality is that we very much do have to care about SQL.

I agree. Clean and efficient abstractions (oxymoron?) to handle data management just doesn't exist. ORMs are great until they're not, at which point you do need to understand SQL and idiosyncrasies of the underlying relational database.

I tend to prefer avoiding ORMs as a preference because of this but unfortunately, development expectations in the current culture don't pad time enough to do this, so you're often reliant on an ORM and wait until things break before someone paying the bills will be swayed to allow developers to go in and clean things up. The "wait until it breaks to go fix and redesign everything" mentality isn't unique to ORMs though, it plagues any abstraction, framework, library, whatever that gets enough done to supply something mostly functional in a shorter time scale.

Re: Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

#97

Post by htkien »

I am over ORMs. I am looking at the documentation for Prisma Client at the moment, and I just think to myself "yet another ORM I have to learn". I have learnt so many ORMs, it is just stupid. SQL is SQL. I wish I had spent all that time further developing my SQL skills rather than learning the latest ORMs API.

For my latest large project, I just used SQL and I am happy. All I did was add some code to make sure the snake case was converted to camel case. Things like returning arrays of child relations can all be done in SQL these days with things like json_agg and json_build_object and so on.

Half of my SQL on the other hand doesn't even map to an ORM. Where is the insert ... select ... where not exists ... These things aren't even possible in the ORM concept model.

Re: Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

#98

Post by matthewmueller »

brap wrote: post #17

I’ve been using Prisma for a while and I quite like it. Best ORM for TypeScript I’ve used. My biggest issue with it is testability. Sure, I can mock the Prisma client in tests with Jest or something, but if I want to test state I pretty much have to reimplement an in-memory DB using JS mocks. I can also connect to a real DB made for testing but it’s quite overkill, I’m usually not interested in testing Prisma itself,…

Thanks for this feedback. We're very aware of this problem and are are actually working on a guide for working with Jest right now.

It's a tricky problem because our use of the type-system is quite complex.

I quite like your idea of a test mode or maybe a mock client that we generate.

Re: Prisma – ORM for Node.js and TypeScript

#99

Post by zackify »

For years node had pretty bad libraries for interacting with databases.

Prisma is the first time it all just makes sense.

The code generation, auto migrating without any code, automatic crud resolvers with nexus, the list goes on.

After using it, I don’t know how you can use any other language for backend. It would just take you much longer and require so much extra work. Nothing like prisma exists in other languages.

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