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Beyond SQL: A relational database for modern applications

fauna.com

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Re: Beyond SQL: A relational database for modern applications

#3

Post by talldatethrow »

I wrote my first self taught LAMP based miniSaas a few years ago. It has 34 paying companies using it with about 400 users total daily.

I want to write another soon. A free webapp saas type for consumers let's say.

Is there a reason I should learn this product instead of just continuing with modern mysql methods that seem to work and seem secure enough?

Re: Beyond SQL: A relational database for modern applications

#4

Post by yawnxyz »

I tried to learn Fauna and FQL a couple of years ago; their documentation was hard to trudge through with few examples, and their pricing was hard to grasp.

I think they also recently nerfed the free tier.

I've been using CouchDB and Pocketbase.io much more successfully for my mini web apps.

Re: Beyond SQL: A relational database for modern applications

#5

Post by rbranson »

Fauna is really cool technology, but I'll note that it lacks interactive transactions as a core design constraint. That does enable a bunch of nice things. However, that means users lose one of the most useful parts of transactional SQL -- simple, safe read/modify/writes.

The only way is to ship all of the "modify" logic into the database via FQL. Given how many times I've seen code that does this unsafely with SQL, probably safe to say that if the bar is raised to "rewrite the logic in a foreign query language" developers will opt for thoughts and prayers instead.

Re: Beyond SQL: A relational database for modern applications

#7

Post by xwowsersx »

yawnxyz wrote: post #4

I tried to learn Fauna and FQL a couple of years ago; their documentation was hard to trudge through with few examples, and their pricing was hard to grasp. I think they also recently nerfed the free tier. I've been using CouchDB and Pocketbase.io much more successfully for my mini web apps.

Pocketbase seems like fun; I had not heard of it before. Separate, but related: whenever I contemplate transitioning from a relational DB to something like CouchDB, or a similar option, to simplify the initial setup and SQL-related hassles, I inevitably realize that, as appealing as it sounds and as much as I'd love to, the challenges and limitations down the road become more apparent and I stick with SQL. I know this is obvious, but the choice really does heavily depend on your specific use case. SQL makes some simple things hard, but the reverse is also true :( I wonder if we'll reach a stage where we can get the advantages of both ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

Re: Beyond SQL: A relational database for modern applications

#8

Post by freels »

rbranson wrote: post #5

Fauna is really cool technology, but I'll note that it lacks interactive transactions as a core design constraint. That does enable a bunch of nice things. However, that means users lose one of the most useful parts of transactional SQL -- simple, safe read/modify/writes. The only way is to ship all of the "modify" logic into the database via FQL. Given how many times I've seen code that does this unsafely with SQL,…

While, making it easy (and possible in the first place) to write procedural code directly in a transaction is a core part of FQL's design, it is certainly possible to implement safe read-modify-write via FQL, it's just less efficient.

Re: Beyond SQL: A relational database for modern applications

#9

Post by freels »

xwowsersx wrote: post #7
yawnxyz wrote: post #4

I tried to learn Fauna and FQL a couple of years ago; their documentation was hard to trudge through with few examples, and their pricing was hard to grasp. I think they also recently nerfed the free tier. I've been using CouchDB and Pocketbase.io much more successfully for my mini web apps.

Pocketbase seems like fun; I had not heard of it before. Separate, but related: whenever I contemplate transitioning from a relational DB to something like CouchDB, or a similar option, to simplify the initial setup and SQL-related hassles, I inevitably realize that, as appealing as it sounds and as much as I'd love to, the challenges and limitations down the road become more apparent and I stick with SQL. I know thi…

Getting the best of both worlds is what we're trying to achieve with Fauna, at least for OLTP use-cases. I'd be curious to hear what challenges with you ran into with other NoSQL databases, though.
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