Databases Linkdump

Mon Apr 17 2023E.W.Ayers

There are just so many tools and software companies that are trying to 'rethink how databases work'. But we keep coming back to SQL. I also feel databases could be much better, but so do seemingly half of all coders. The other half choose boring technology.

There are two main threads when talking about building better databases: scalability and developer ergonomics. Scalability is stuff to do with performance and running at 'planet scale' etc. It's important but really you should only care about this if you are FAANG. The more interesting aspect to me is developer ergonomics, this is about making it easy to use and debug databases when you are developing apps.

I have thoughts on all this, but for now let's dump all of the links on this topic.

I will update this doc.

1. Posts on how databases could be better

• Seph Gentle: databases have failed the web (HN comments)

• Jamie Brandon: Against SQL, What is a database?

• Curtis Poe: how databases hurt your startup

• Nelson Elhage:

  • Some musings on ORMs

  • what mongo got right

  • some opinionated thoughts on SQL databases

• George Seabridge A new database proposal

• Philipp Hauer: Why relational databases are not the cure-all

• Phil Booth: Nine ways to shoot yourself in the foot with PostgreSQL

• Everything wrong with databases and why their complexity is now unnecessary (HN discussion)

• The Stockholm Syndrome of SQL

2. Posts on how your new database is bad

• Erik Bernhardsson: I don't want to learn your garbage query language

• long live sql (video)

• mongodb is web scale (video)

• Don’t use Prisma and Primagen reacting to it (video)

• Geoff Wozniak What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL

• Neward The Vietnam of Computer Science

3. Hot new databases and tools

I'm playing loose with the categories. I will keep updating this.

3.1. New databases

A more comprehensive list is maintained by CMU.

• Vaticle typedb

• rethinkdb | why rethink failed

• surreal

• dgraph

• Fauna

• EdgeDB

• pouchdb

• mongodb

• dynamodb

• apache cassandra

• neo4j

• libSQL is a fork of SQLite open to contributions. Inspiring about page.

• EventStoreDB

• ... lots more

3.2. New ways of hosting SQL dbs

• cockroach

• planetscale

• supabase

• Turso looks like it's using SQLite, interested to try.

3.3. ORMs

• JavaScript: Prisma, Drizzle, Kysely, knex, dexie.js

• Rust: Diesel, Bonsai, sqlx

• Python: SqlAlchemy, Peewee, Piccolo, dxd (by me)

• Hibernate

3.4. Low-code databases

these are often marketed as spreadsheets but I don't see the distinction other than spreadsheets focus much more on UI and low-code visualisations.

• Airtable

• Rows

• xata

• baserow

• ... there are so so many of these.

3.5. Holistic 'frameworks' with a persistence layer

• redwood js

• ChiselStrike

• Julia: Genie

• firebase