Ecto-phobia

natewallis

Hi..

I am having a bit of ecto-phobia.. if this term catches on, please send royalties my way…

I have used rails in the past and played with ActiveRecord and now moving into Ecto for my Elixir projects. I have no doubts that the Ecto API is solid but I have always feel like I might be painting myself into a corner when I use Ecto and never sure about how locked down my database design needs to be before I venture into ecto-land.. I have my design down on paper, but I am always worried about changing a column name later on and what impacts that will have on my code.

Is it possible to get to a point of no return with Ecto and similar tools?

Maybe I just need to be told that everythings “gonna be alright”! Happy new year all..

16 comments

#ecto

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2018-01-24 00:28:53 UTC

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mischov

I haven’t had problems with things like changing column names when using Ecto- a migration and a change to the schema and I’m good to go[^1].

[^1] : As others have pointed out, renaming columns isn’t quite as simple as that, but that’s not a problem Ecto makes any worse.

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natewallis

Thanks for the replies.. this took a direction I wasn’t expecting.. looks like I have some reading to do!

BTW - I have overcome my fear of commitment and started with Ecto. I think I was throwing myself off by using phx.gen.html when I should have been building my migrations and schemas from the ground up so that I understood it better.. lesson learnt.

Till next time!

Post #16

bobbypriambodo

Less about Ecto but database design of a complex systems is a tough task overall. Modifying tables (e.g. adding, renaming, indexing columns) can get messy when you’re in the millions of rows I also always have the anxiety, that little 10% of my mind thinking “what if I had designed this all wrong?”

IMO there’s nothing you can do about it other than to always be ready for change and perhaps consult to a domain expert to make sure you get the terms right (therefore less likely to rename columns; I like to think DB column names are like an API; you’re expected to do some work if it changes).

Post #3

fxn

Database schemas evolve as applications evolve, new tables, new columns, new constraints, drops, renames…

That is normal and to be expected. But think that if the schema changes, you’ll need to edit the code no matter what. Either Ecto, or hard-coded SQL, or stored procedures that depend on it. None of these things auto-update. Renaming a column is not just a SQL statement, it needs maintenance and coordination wherever the column is being used. It may even require multiple deploys if you may have old and new code cooexisting for a moment in a rolling start.

To me, something like Ecto (or AR) is a catalyzer. You know the SQL you need, you could write it by hand. But you instead leverage these tools to have the SQL robustly generated on your behalf, using Elixir code that is more understandable most of the times because of the higher-level API it is expressed in.

Then, occasionally the SQL you need is just too complicated, then you resort to raw SQL.

Embrace Ecto! Yes, it is gonna be alright :).

Post #5