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18 posts tagged with "database"

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Supabase RLS Alternative

· 14 min read
Jiasheng
Co-founder of ZenStack

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A Short History of BaaS

In the early days of web and mobile app development, building a backend from scratch was laborious and error-prone. Developers had to manage servers, databases, and infrastructure and ensure scalability while writing the core business logic of their applications. Then came BaaS(Backend-as-a-Service), promising to liberate developers from this burden.

End-To-End Polymorphism: From Database to UI, Achieving SOLID Design

· 14 min read
Jiasheng
Co-founder of ZenStack

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Polymorphism Is the Key To Open-Closed Principle

The three fundamental pillars of Object-Oriented Programming(OOP) are Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Polymorphism. Polymorphism is likely the least-mentioned concept, possibly because this term is not frequently used in daily life. However, it is actually the most important one because it is the key to achieving compliance with the Open-Closed Principle (OCP) in OOP.

How Modern SQL Databases Are Changing Web Development - #4 Into the AI Era

· 7 min read
Yiming
Co-founder of ZenStack

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SQL databases have been powering the web since their inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Database systems, albeit sounding unfathomable and dull, have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Lots of talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and the way we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

Now we've come to the last part of this series. Let's get hold of the hottest trend of the year - AI, and see how modern databases enable easier development of AI-powered applications.

Tackling Polymorphism in Prisma

· 12 min read
Yiming
Co-founder of ZenStack

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EDIT 4/25/2024: the feature has been released in ZenStack V2.

Prisma is a beloved ORM for NodeJS developers. As with every popular open-source project, it has a long wishlist. Here are two prominent examples:

They are about the same thing and have received at least 1000 reactions in total. The ask is for modeling an inheritance hierarchy in the database. ORM’s responsibility is to fix the gap between the two world views: "table + relations" and "object-oriented". Polymorphism is an obvious missing piece in its mission.

How Modern SQL Databases Are Changing Web Development - #3 Better Developer Experience

· 7 min read
Yiming
Co-founder of ZenStack

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SQL databases have been powering the web since their inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Database systems, albeit sounding unfathomable and dull, have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Lots of talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and the way we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

Let’s discuss how DX (developer experience) is becoming increasingly crucial in database designs.

How Modern SQL Databases Are Changing Web Development - #2 New Ways to Program

· 7 min read
Yiming
Co-founder of ZenStack

Cover Image

SQL databases have been powering the web since their inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Database systems, albeit sounding unfathomable and dull, have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Lots of talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and the way we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

Let’s talk about how we program against the database today.

How Modern SQL Databases Are Changing Web Development - #1 Serverless & Edge

· 8 min read
Yiming
Co-founder of ZenStack

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SQL databases have been powering the web since its inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Although sounding unfathomable and dull, database systems have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Many talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we use it to build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and how we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

Let's talk about "Serverless" and "Edge-Ready" today.

Replacing Google Firebase - An Open-Source Alternative Stack

· 12 min read
Yiming
Co-founder of ZenStack

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In the past month or so, Google managed to piss off two distinct groups of people. The first group who manage domain names, either for their employers or themselves, are hit by a surprise attack from Google’s selling its domain service to SquareSpace. The other group is digital marketers who are forced to switch from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics V4, which is said to be “unbelievably hard to use”.

Since Google has a good tradition of killing products, we can’t help but wonder who’ll be the next. Will it be … Firebase 🤔?

Prisma + ZenStack: An Alternative to PostgREST

· 5 min read
Yiming
Co-founder of ZenStack

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Most web apps only consist of two things: a frontend UI and a backend transaction system. And most of the time, the "backend" is just a glorified intermediary that reads from and writes to a database. So a naive question is raised: why do I need that intermediary? Why can't I just expose the database directly to the frontend?

Yes, you can! PostgREST is built exactly for that purpose.