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authorEuAndreh <eu@euandre.org>2020-09-03 16:22:41 -0300
committerEuAndreh <eu@euandre.org>2020-09-03 16:33:38 -0300
commitfb55dfb3cee6653b9a53011f6e2d808feaec5594 (patch)
tree11160fb24dba82dcfb945b7ecae6e46d549fe2ff
parentfinally change mailto link to "RE: " (diff)
downloadeuandre.org-fb55dfb3cee6653b9a53011f6e2d808feaec5594.tar.gz
euandre.org-fb55dfb3cee6653b9a53011f6e2d808feaec5594.tar.xz
db post: Add correction on SQLite assumption of POSIX filesystem
-rw-r--r--_posts/2020-08-31-the-database-i-wish-i-had.md44
-rw-r--r--spelling/en.txt1
-rw-r--r--spelling/international.txt1
3 files changed, 43 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/_posts/2020-08-31-the-database-i-wish-i-had.md b/_posts/2020-08-31-the-database-i-wish-i-had.md
index 00e7323..4ba1885 100644
--- a/_posts/2020-08-31-the-database-i-wish-i-had.md
+++ b/_posts/2020-08-31-the-database-i-wish-i-had.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
---
title: The database I wish I had
date: 2020-08-31
-updated_at: 2020-09-01
+updated_at: 2020-09-03
layout: post
lang: en
ref: the-database-i-wish-i-had
@@ -56,11 +56,49 @@ the source of truth, and allow the application to work on top of it.
[**SQLite**][sqlite] is a great example of that: it is a very powerful
relational database that runs [almost anywhere][sqlite-whentouse]. What I miss
from it that SQLite doesn't provide is the ability to run it on the browser:
-even though you could compile it to WebAssembly, it assumes a POSIX filesystem
-that would have to be emulated.
+even though you could compile it to WebAssembly, ~~it assumes a POSIX filesystem
+that would have to be emulated~~[^posix-sqlite].
[sqlite]: https://sqlite.org/index.html
[sqlite-whentouse]: https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html
+[^posix-sqlite]: It was [pointed out to me](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24338881)
+ that SQLite doesn't assume the existence of a POSIX filesystem, as I wrongly
+ stated. Thanks for the correction.
+
+ This makes me consider it as a storage backend all by itself. I
+ initially considered having an SQLite storage backend as one implementation
+ of the POSIX filesystem storage API that I mentioned. My goal was to rely on
+ it so I could validate the correctness of the actual implementation, given
+ SQLite's robustness.
+
+ However it may even better to just use SQLite, and get an ACID backend
+ without recreating a big part of SQLite from scratch. In fact, both Datomic
+ and PouchDB didn't create an storage backend for themselves, they just
+ plugged on what already existed and already worked. I'm beginning to think
+ that it would be wiser to just do the same, and drop entirely the from
+ scratch implementation that I mentioned.
+
+ That's not to say that adding an IndexedDB compatibility layer to SQLite
+ would be enough to make it fit the other requirements I mention on this
+ page. SQLite still is an implementation of a relational, SQL, table-oriented
+ database. It is probably true that cherry-picking the relevant parts of
+ SQLite (like storage access, consistency, crash recovery, parser generator,
+ etc.) and leaving out the unwanted parts (SQL, tables, FTS, etc.) would be
+ better than using of all it just to building on top of the whole SQLite
+ stack, but that's simply an optimization. Both could even coexist, if
+ desired.
+
+ SQLite would have to be treated similarly to how Datomic treats SQL
+ databases: instead of having a table for each entities, spread attributes
+ over the tables, etc., it treats SQL databases as a key-value storage so it
+ doesn't have to re-implement interacting with the disk.
+
+ The tables would contain blocks of binary data, so there isn't a difference
+ on how the SQLite storage backend behaves and how the IndexedDB storage
+ backend behaves, much like Datomic works the same regardless of the storage
+ backend, same for PouchDB.
+
+ I welcome corrections on what I said above, too.
[**PouchDB**][pouchdb] is another great example: it's a full reimplementation of
[CouchDB][couchdb] that targets JavaScript environments, mainly the browser and
diff --git a/spelling/en.txt b/spelling/en.txt
index b4a2e52..1b5fdf8 100644
--- a/spelling/en.txt
+++ b/spelling/en.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
aren
autocommit
+backend
couldn
curation
declaratively
diff --git a/spelling/international.txt b/spelling/international.txt
index b9059eb..533d84c 100644
--- a/spelling/international.txt
+++ b/spelling/international.txt
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ Datomic
EuAndreh
F
FFI
+FTS
Fastmail
GPLv
GPLv3