024: BYODB: Bring Your Own Database

Welcome to Remotely Interesting brought to you by Netlify.

People who were remotely interesting:

• Cassidy Williams
• Jason Lengstorf
• Phil Hawksworth
• Tara Z. Manicsic

SHOW NOTES:

Who's got a favorite database?

• Everyone

Structured vs. Unstructured Data

• our first database experiences (lots of MySQL)
• learning about databases
• Jason thinks his brain gets bigger when he learns things
• Microsoft Excel does everything
• MongoDB & mongoose the GraphQL
• It is SQL or SQL
• Shadow and Bone (putting this here for Phil)

How do you use DBs in a Jamstack architecture?

• having to do DBs for "real" sites
• abdicating responsibilities to the experts at a Database as a Service
• sharding and giggling
• from limited options & complicated setups to lots of new options
  • FaunaDB
  • Hasura
  • Supabase
  • PlanetScale, etc.
• decoupling the frontend from the backend
• via API endpoints & serverless functions, we're standardizing communication

DX & How we choose DBs

• GraphQL user interface (GraphiQL)
• on the basis of the API, writing queries, accelerating dev workflow
• how much do we need to know about the DBs
• Phil is wise, you're welcome, Phil
• the dev's comfort level

Who needs the top-tier?

• you probs aren't going to hit Twitter-scale
• by the time you outgrow the service, you'll prob. have the money to go bigger
• dbs aren't that incredibly different
• ask the company what your next step should be if you hit a limit
• kicking tires/free tiers are so valuable

What features do we look for?
- a clear, understandable API
- an easy onramp to getting started/getting data
- what am I building & what are the cost implications (rate limits, etc.)
- even really brilliant, smart people like Jason mess up, a story about loops
- having a playground like GraphiQL
- a discussion of GraphQL hesitancy
- Cassidy's professional conclusion, "ehhh"
- Jason talks about depends

Cassidy exhibits her humor mastery and it shines like the sun! 🌤

a resource! https://serverless.css-tricks.com/
another resource: https://graphql.org/learn/
a fantastic Phil Supabase resource: https://ntl.fyi/3BsJheT

TidBits & ThoughtThings™️
What is the worst form of storage you own?

As always, we hope you find it remotely interesting.

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