[HN Gopher] Building PlanetScale with PlanetScale
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       Building PlanetScale with PlanetScale
        
       Author : mschoening
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2021-08-18 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (planetscale.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (planetscale.com)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Previous related thread:
       | 
       |  _PlanetScale - Database for Developers_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27197873 - May 2021 (128
       | comments)
        
       | chris_st wrote:
       | I've been building a small personal app with PlanetScale and I
       | like it a lot. Their way of doing schema branching works well,
       | and is easy to use (though slightly tedious), and makes a lot of
       | sense. Not affiliated with them in any way, just a pleased
       | customer.
        
       | js4ever wrote:
       | I noticed they just launched in aws eu-west-1 (Dublin, Ireland).
       | There is now a new option to select the location when you create
       | a new db. Yay it's now usable in Europe!
        
       | TeeWEE wrote:
       | At Tiqets we have a different repo with SQL migrations using
       | Flyway... ITs as simply as branching that repo, creating your
       | migration. Getting the pipeline green and merging it back.
       | 
       | All migrations are automatically executed on production, pre-
       | tested. Reviewed. No DB Administrator, No deployment together
       | with the app.
       | 
       | It works quite well..
       | 
       | However, personally I really like not having to deal with schema
       | changes. For example Firebase or Cloud DataStore is really
       | nice... Its the best for developers, but not for data integrity.
        
       | ublaze wrote:
       | I've been following PlanetScale for a few years and interviewed
       | their CTO Sugu last week:
       | https://www.softwareatscale.dev/p/software-at-scale-29-sugu-...,
       | if anyone's interested to hear their story of building Vitess for
       | YouTube and some details on PlanetScale behind the scenes.
        
       | dyeje wrote:
       | Personally, migrations have never been painful enough to warrant
       | this sort of product. The idea of branching databases on the
       | other hand is really cool. Is each branch a full copy? Seems like
       | that would lead to huge storage needs for larger databases.
        
         | tenaciousDaniel wrote:
         | Interesting, I'd be fascinated to hear what tech you use,
         | because I've always had a really hard time with migrations.
        
           | dyeje wrote:
           | Any migration scheme with a timestamp based approach is going
           | to work well (e.g. ActiveRecord, TypeORM).
        
         | k__ wrote:
         | I had the impression they PS was interesting because they offer
         | serverless SQL.
        
           | aseipp wrote:
           | I've been PlanetScale for a test drive recently, and it's a
           | bit of both. I also think they kind of go hand-in-hand: if
           | you have "serverless" things (or just Docker), they can come
           | and go with connections very quickly, so picking the correct
           | "pause time" to take the DB down for an ALTER TABLE is
           | possible but a tiny bit awkward. Online migrations mean you
           | never take it down and it's always available so that's kind
           | of moot.
           | 
           | But now you do have some other considerations (see below.) I
           | don't think it's an absolute pancea, but it's certainly a
           | very interesting and very useful secondary point in the
           | design space. I like PlanetScale a lot. The free tier is also
           | actually useful I think.
           | 
           | To be clear even if it's is "serverless SQL" you still have
           | to design with the fact you're using Vitess in mind. So you
           | have no foreign keys, scalability is done by keyspace
           | sharding (not currently available in PlanetScale), apps deal
           | with online migration where the schema evolves as they access
           | it, etc. You have to keep these things in mind but you get
           | some benefits in return, like most things.
        
             | pier25 wrote:
             | > _So you have no foreign keys_
             | 
             | What other differences are there vs MySQL in terms of data
             | modeling?
        
         | joshmarlow wrote:
         | The database branching idea seems to be popping up more and
         | more. IIRC, TermniusDB supports it too -
         | https://terminusdb.com/
         | 
         | I've not played with PlanetScale yet, but I am planning on
         | playing with TerminusDB in the near future.
        
         | MapleWalnut wrote:
         | From what I understand, they only branch the schema. They don't
         | copy the data.
        
       | rmah wrote:
       | This looks quite compelling, but what about use cases where
       | "serverless" is simply not viable. In some industries, you must
       | control access to the server in order to stay compliant with
       | regulations. At least for some of the data. Is there a plan to
       | have a software-only release? Or did I just miss it.
        
       | leerob wrote:
       | I've been a fan of PlanetScale and recently was able to chat[1]
       | with their Head of Eng. Great team, better product execution.
       | Also moved my personal site from using Firebase/Redis to just
       | MySQL with PlanetScale[2] and the results have been solid.
       | Averaging 128ms on function response times with a p95 of 250ms.
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqBG5rFP4Ic
       | 
       | [2]: https://github.com/leerob/leerob.io/pull/326
        
       | sorenbs wrote:
       | PlanetScale is the serverless relational database we have been
       | waiting for all this time. It's truly excellent, and being based
       | on the same tech that runs youtube, we know it will scale well.
        
       | zinclozenge wrote:
       | So you create a TCP connection to your database over the public
       | internet? Does it have an http api like aurora
       | serverless/fauna/datastax astra?
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-18 23:01 UTC)