[Mertax]

What’s the application for this? EAV is often an anti-pattern when a schema could be defined, but I’m actually using it as well. Our application is an end-user-defined database for mobile data collection. The EAV model in SQLite is a bit of a cognitive burden but makes offline sync and conflict resolution pretty straight forward. It’s almost a crude CRDT implementation.

[heyzk]

It was a scheduling, work tracking and invoicing app for service providers that have spotty-at-best network connections, think long periods out of cell service but still need to do complex data entry and querying.

> EAV is often an anti-pattern when a schema could be defined

Super interesting, I wasn't aware that EAV is an anti-pattern in that case. Is it an efficiency thing?

For clarity, my design wasn't schemaless, values (can) have defined datatypes and relationships are first-class. I meant that I found adding to or modifying the schema was less cumbersome and error prone than traditional SQL schema additions or changes. I feel like SQL schema management is more suited to server-based dbs where you have tight control over the db lifecycle, which you don't when it lives on a bunch of mobile devices.

Totally agree with the ease of sync and conflict resolution, another strong pro.

Love to hear more about your approach! Also feel free to reach out (email in bio) if you'd like to compare notes some time.