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0 pointsquickthrower22y ago0 comments

There is no such thing as “relational data” here. There is the data I need to store to implement my app. No matter how I shaped it, it was suboptimal. Where it might shine is a subsystem like chat with just messages. Oh just got a flashback about Firebase rules. That alone is a time sink where you could have got the project done in Rails already :-)

The hard work of using Firebase’s apis, libraries, reading it’s docs (which are detailed but badly organized) is more than the delta between not needing a backend. And for a non trivial app you will end up using functions: infact if you want a guarantee that your user has a name then you will need to write a function. And that is… a backend, like writing an app.route statement.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

endisneigh2y ago· 1 in thread

From this post I can tell you’re not really understanding how Firebase is supposed to be used, which is fine. For you it’s better to use the traditional approach with database and app server.

And yes, there is such a thing as relational data. If you do not believe this then you really shouldn’t use Firebase (or dynamodb for that matter).

quickthrower2OP2y ago

I know I am holding it wrong etc! But I really tried in earnest, as a fanboy of firebase, for quite a long time. The problems I had were with basic things. You have companies, a company can have many users, users might belong to more than one company (hello Slack...) and then there can be relationship between users.

Putting aside the problem between chair & keyboard.

Another difference is more if you make a mistake in your relational schema, you can SQL your way out of it - add an extra join or group by. And you can also fairly easily migrate you way out of it to a new schema that is the right structure.

This requires actual code with firebase, and a lot of patience, and probably a lot more downtime. So you need more of a waterfall approach, I would suggest, to design a schema ahead of time, and know all of your requirements. NoSQL document-oriented schemas just aren't flexible (unless the DB supports something like materialized views to help you get out of it)

hot_gril2y ago

While NodeJS+Postgres is my go-to, I think it's harder than you're making it sound. Firebase would probably be easier for someone who's new to this altogether or somewhere in between.

There's still nothing that holds your hand through a proper client-server interface, good relational schema design, and all the glue in between. Partially because nobody agrees on what those are.

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