aschrijver
(Moved to separate topic from: https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/lower-the-initial-barrier-by-using-ets-and-not-postgresql-for-phoenix-examples/53287 )
FWIW I’ve seen sqlite and related projects (e.g. litestream) getting rave reactions on HN the past 1.5 year or so (even today there’s such discussion), and what I find intriguing in many of the comments I read was people using it in production. So much discussion in the tech community comes from startups and Big Tech who need hyperscale, and vendors playing into this. Many average web apps don’t need all that. I am interested myself in small technology, and sqlite is a great fit there. I think more sqlite focus would not only be attractive wrt onboarding, but for actual use as well.
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kwando
Thats true
but gives you enough to get started.
josevalim
Yes, the litestream stuff is exciting and if they finally remove the single-writer limitation with hc-tree, it would be huge. I do have a question though: how do you deal with backups in such cases? Because there is an argument for simpler deployments with sqlite3 but that inevitably pushes some concerns to you, no?
aschrijver
Yes. I could not give you a good answer now. Maybe a comment on HN, now the discussion is still active?
benwilson512
FYI Moved these sqlite specific bits out to their own thread, I think the suitability of Sqlite in production is a super interesting topic right now, but I think is a bit tangential to the original thread.
josevalim
Apparently Litestream can replicate to S3/Google/etc: Install - Litestream
I also found this for a lightweight cron-based approach: Cron-based backup - Litestream
LostKobrakai
There are also some sqlite options without litestream. From the point of having a separate file of the db it’s mostly a matter of putting that file somewhere safe.
D4no0
The only thing that scares me is the fact that you need to lock the file, it would be nice to be able to backup partially without having to lock.
dimitarvp
SQLite has its own backup functionality as linked by @LostKobrakai – it’s not just copying the files though – and a lot of energy has been expended to prove that it works stably.
Additionally, it also has the concepts of patch-sets and change-sets (section 2.1) – somewhat to the confusion of us in the Elixir space due to the naming clash – that allow you to accumulate changes since a last known snapshot, in a dedicated file.
SQLite has a strong backup apparatus even without
litestream. The latter seeks to make backups over the network more or less transparent. The rest is well-covered by sqlite itself.dimitarvp
That’s already covered. You issue a backup command and SQLite itself makes new file(s) while you’re using the same session. It’s fully atomic.
People get needlessly scared there, their team is very aware of the potential issues and took care of them a while ago.
kwando
It is not recommend to backup sqlite by just copying the file. You want to use the
backupandrestorecommands.From command line backup can be done like this, super simple.
$ sqlite /path/to/db.sqlite ".backup /path/to/file.bkp"For most of my pet projects it is absolutely fine to use sqlite, it is plenty fast and super reliable. I cant say postgres ever caused me any big troubles, but the simplicity of sqlite is just great when you can get away with it