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by scotty79 462 days ago
I think that's the main issue. It's not enough to have a database that can automatically sync between frontend and backend. It would also need to be complex enough to keep some logic just on the backend (because you don't want to reveal it and entrust adherence to the client) and reject some changes done on frontend if they are invalid. Database would become the app itself.
1 comments
acac10 462 days ago
Which many DBs allow: - stored procedures - Oracle PL/SQL

I used to work for Oracle but never liked that approach.

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scotty79 462 days ago
I don't think a stored procedure that operates only on master copy of the database can reject update comming from a second copy and nicely comminicate thus happened so that the other copy can infrom the user through some ui.
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Sammi 462 days ago
The issue with stored procedures is testing and code maintenance. How do I run unit tests? How do I version control and code review?
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TeMPOraL 462 days ago
It's the same issue that killed the image-based programming in favor of edit-compile-run cycle we're all doing. "How do I test? How do I do version control? How do I migrate?".

These are valid concerns, but $deity I wish we focused on finding solutions for them, because the current paradigm of edit/compile/run + plaintext single source of truth codebase, is already severely limiting our ability to build and maintain complex software.

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brulard 462 days ago
While I don't like the idea of putting logic to the DBRMS (if not for a really good reason), you can do unit tests and code reviews. In a serious project you already should have a way to make migrations and versioning of the DB itself (for example using prisma, drizzle, etc.). Procedures would be just another entry in the migrations and unit tests can create testing temporary DB, run the procedures and compare the results. I agree tooling is (AFAIK) not good and there will be much more work around that, but it is possible.
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x0x0 462 days ago
The other issue, from experience, is needing to reimplement logic as well -- you end up with stored procedures that duplicate logic that also must be run either in your server or on your client. eg given the state of the system, is this mutation valid.

Then those multiple implementations inevitably suffer different bugs and drift, leading to really ugly bugs.

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