[eatonphil]

I've been wanting to use Drive as a db recently on an app I'm working on as cheaper/free data storage. That is, instead of hosting a db and storing user data there, I would store it on each user's google drive. I see it as a way to save costs by not worrying about the security of my databases, cost of space/uptime/traffic, etc. What are issues am I not thinking of?

[donpinkus]

It's an interesting idea - here are some issues to consider:

1. Joining data will be very slow. If you need to access 500 database to get the "comments" on a "post", you're going to have issues.

2. How will you change the database structure as you iterate?

3. Storage cost of data is so low, that by the time you would start paying for data, you would have greatly exceeded the capabilities of Google Sheets.

4. Google sheets are slower than databases - there are no indexes, keys, the data is not stored in a way meant for most db operations (selections, etc)

I'm sure theres more but these seem to be the biggest ones for me.

That said, you should definitely try it - it's an interesting project at the very least.

[dudus]

Storage costs are not low. They are free since Google Spreadsheets do not count towards your Storage Limits. You'll be limited only by the 2M maximum cells a spreadsheet can hold.