We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
getrover.substack.com
We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
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Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#2Interesting read! It kind of a became a rule nowadays to never store logic in the database nowadays, but it's always refreshing to see when it could work. Please give us an update in few months of how it is going on the long run!
Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#3[deleted]
Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#4I have similar concerns, like how to reconcile authz with search. Search wants to be its own thing, and so does authz. Pray tell how I'm supposed to get a paginated list of authorized results? You have to filter or have the search service call the authz service. Life is easier when the main database can handle everything.
We should develop and translate this extension to other databases.
Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#5I have similar concerns, like how to reconcile authz with search. Search wants to be its own thing, and so does authz. Pray tell how I'm supposed to get a paginated list of authorized results? You have to filter or have the search service call the authz service. Life is easier when the main database can handle everything. We should develop and translate this extension to other databases.
Authorized search isn't difficult. Store authorized readers (people, groups, etc) on each result to pre-filter results, then post-filter results with an additional authorization check in case the authorization store was updated but the search results store was not. Context: I've built an authorized search solution before.
Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#6I have similar concerns, like how to reconcile authz with search. Search wants to be its own thing, and so does authz. Pray tell how I'm supposed to get a paginated list of authorized results? You have to filter or have the search service call the authz service. Life is easier when the main database can handle everything. We should develop and translate this extension to other databases.
Reconciling externalized authz with search is actually quite a challenging problem. For standard externalized authz, the recommendation is some form of pre-filtering or post-filtering [1], for which we actually built LookupResources (pre-filtering) and CheckBulkPermission (post-filtering) into SpiceDB.
However, as you mentioned, life is easier when the main database can handle everything, so we actually built a solution in that space called Materialize [2], which heavily denormalizes the authorization data and allows for joining within application databases such as Postgres. My colleague Evan actually put together a really cool video about using it with Gitea [3].
Recognizing that even with Materialize, however, the need to consume events can be a bit annoying, I've been doing some work to allow Postgres itself to do native JOINs against SpiceDB (and other operations). I demo it briefly in our recent announcements video [4] and I think it effectively solves this problem within Postgres, while still allowing for all the benefits (scale, performance, redundancy, distribution) of externalized authz.
[1]: https://authzed.com/docs/spicedb/modeling/protecting-a-list-...
[2]: https://authzed.com/products/authzed-materialize
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/live/u3i1SEd9Ll8?si=mCz5mZterxthoEwj
[4]: https://www.youtube.com/live/uz_gxz3whS0?si=g4NUZAIltYVyFzYj...
Disclaimer: I'm cofounder and CTO at AuthZed and we build SpiceDB and Materialize
Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#7I originally read that as OpenFPGA (note the extra P) and wondered what kind of eldritch abomination they had created ...
Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#8> The big problem that we kept running into was keeping everything in sync all the time. Every time we add a new user, organization, repository, etc. in our database, we also had to add the corresponding tuples in OpenFGA.
This is a fundamental problem with all Zanzibar-inspired authorization systems[0] that require centralizing ~all authorization data and led us @ Oso to build a more flexible system[1] that grants more control over what authorization-relevant data you centralize vs. decide keep locally.
0: https://www.osohq.com/post/authorization-for-the-rest-of-us
1: https://www.osohq.com/docs/develop/facts/local-authorization
disclosure: founding engineer at Oso
Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#9I have similar concerns, like how to reconcile authz with search. Search wants to be its own thing, and so does authz. Pray tell how I'm supposed to get a paginated list of authorized results? You have to filter or have the search service call the authz service. Life is easier when the main database can handle everything. We should develop and translate this extension to other databases.
Authorized search isn't difficult. Store authorized readers (people, groups, etc) on each result to pre-filter results, then post-filter results with an additional authorization check in case the authorization store was updated but the search results store was not. Context: I've built an authorized search solution before.
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Re: We rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Authorized search isn't difficult. Store authorized readers (people, groups, etc) on each result to pre-filter results, then post-filter results with an additional authorization check in case the authorization store was updated but the search results store was not. Context: I've built an authorized search solution before.
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> I remember building a project where we kept a mapping table of users to permissions for quick lookups, but man, it got messy with data updates.
Yep, as I mentioned above, its not an easy problem but once it is solved for you, it becomes "just" watching the events and performing the JOINs.
> especially if we could create an extension for other databases
See my video I linked above about the Postgres FDW: It does exactly this for SpiceDB and works seamlessly as-if there is a denormalized permissions table sitting in your Postgres, while still supporting the full array of complex authorization rules found in ReBAC.