13 ms·

Envelope – Postgres database to web app with just HTML and SQL

115 points by justintocci 11y ago

justintocci 11y ago
We are happy to announce the release of Envelope v1.0.0 today. Envelope is a complete platform that makes building web apps on top of PostgreSQL easy. Envelope is free, open source, offered under a PostgreSQL style license, compatible with modern and mobile browsers, production ready and available today at envelope.xyz. All you need to know is SQL, and some HTML and you can publish your database as a web application with Envelope! Envelope source code is available on Github but free installers are available for Mac, Linux and FreeBSD. Visit envelope.xyz and click on "Install" to get your copy.
- spyder 11y ago
  The installers cannot be downloaded because when I click the buttons I get this: {"stat": false, "dat": {"error": "canonical_read_file failed"}}
  - justintocci 11y ago
    fixed! Thank you!
  - justintocci 11y ago
    People are trying to download from the old link. Please refresh the install page to get the latest link.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  > Envelope is a complete platform that makes building web apps on top of PostgreSQL easy. Easy when it is a simple CRUD app? When does 'easy' stop and the real work begin? >...production ready and available today... What are some production apps that have been built with this tool? >All you need to know is SQL, and some HTML and you can publish your database as a web application with Envelope! Is that all? Again, is this just for a simple CRUD app? If not, then for a substantial application, what do you mean by "some HTML"? What are the real world uses for this? I didn't really get a clear picture of that from your web site. Edit: These questions sounded a bit snarky. Not my intention. If I had a better idea of what this was actually used for it would help.
  - justintocci 11y ago
    > When does 'easy' stop and the real work begin? Envelope includes the Greyspots framework which is a collection of web components that talk to PostgreSQL through the Envelope server. These web components give you all the standard widgets that you would use to put together a normal database app. For example, all the components that MS Access provides, Greyspots framework provides. Many app developers will never need to write their own widgets, but for those who do need something unique, you can copy the closest Greyspots widget (its just a Javascript web component) and hack it into whatever you need. Then you just use it in your HTML via <my-component>. More info on Web Components: webcomponents.org
  - justintocci 11y ago
    >...production ready and available today... Envelope has been in production for six years. Apps in production: Foreign stocking location (barcode inventory app), Jmine (Export of a Goldmine database published to the web), all our internal apps (Address Book, Calendar, Wiki), JType (export of Suntype published to the web, Suntype is a DOS-based newspaper accounting app). Workflow Products, LLC has used Envelope for all its customers for years now. > (SQL and HTML) Is that all? Again, is this just for a simple CRUD app? I've worked with MS Access for many years and never wrote my own widget. Envelope is designed for these types of apps. You can build simple apps with no Javascript. You can easily build very full featured apps with a little Javascript but you don't need to write any widgets or extend the platform to do so.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      Ok, thanks. That makes much more sense now.
- bdcravens 11y ago
  > All you need to know is SQL, and some HTML So it's a reimagined ColdFusion? :-)
  - puredemo 11y ago
    Having worked on CF, it's not as bad as people made it out to be.
    - bdcravens 11y ago
      I actually worked with CF most of my career, spoke at some CF conferences, and still run the Houston CF user group. Don't use it as much as I used to (moved mostly to Rails for the ecosystem), but it's still a very capable language.
      - jhardcastle 11y ago
        As someone who is still, 17 years later, running a large-ish production CF site on a daily basis, and still teaching new hires and interns to use CF every summer, I'm happy to see a little (!) CF love on HN. I've built production apps in Rails, PHP, and CF, and I've tinkered with Go, Python, etc. I still haven't found a language that gets interns from "don't know HTML" to "working dynamic web thing" faster than ColdFusion.
  - justintocci 11y ago
    I admit, I don't use CF. I looked at the Wikipedia entry for it and I see its heavy on server side programming. Envelope replaces server side programming. CF uses server side programming to make components whereas Envelope uses Javascript web components on the client side. Their seems to be a lot of overlap in expected use cases. Internal apps, data-driven apps. I apologize, I can't really assert much else do to lack of experience with CF.
    - bdcravens 11y ago
      Aside from implementation details, I think the premise is the same: simple data access using SQL and rendering using familiar HTML-like syntax for markup and logic. CF of course came about at a time when browsers were far less capable (1995), so rendering is of course on server. Additionally, I think CF probably has more middleware, but I really haven't given Envelope much of a look (you really need a standard docs page)
reustle 11y ago
Really cool project, not so cool website. Here's some feedback: * Took me a minute to realize I can't scroll when my mouse is outside the center container * Drop the sticky header/footer (let them scroll with the content) * Add a bit more padding / line-spacing on the content on most pages (especially the Install page) * Optimize (scale down?) the images on the support page so they load quickly (they seem pretty heavy) Great work, though!
- justintocci 11y ago
  Fixed! Thank you for the feedback! I apologize for the look, none of us here are designers but we try hard. People that aren't seeing the changes need to hit refresh on their browser. I apologize for the confusion.
  - reustle 11y ago
    I am no designer either, which is why every project of mine starts with Bootstrap :D
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
Canada 11y ago
I have a suggestion: Put a demo on your web site. edit: Another suggestion... use a proper source of random numbers in init_aes_key_iv(). Using the time isn't good.
- justintocci 11y ago
  We are working on it. We didn't anticipate the demand. Give us an hour or so.
- justintocci 11y ago
  We moved to: time(NULL) * getpid() * clock() Thanks!
  - joelthelion 11y ago
    That's still not a good idea. Use your OS' random source.
    - justintocci 11y ago
      We wanted to avoid anything controversial. Do we need to make this configurable to make everyone happy? https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/insecurities_in.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/insecurities_...
      - MrRadar 11y ago
        Even if it isn't perfect /dev/random is a hell of a lot more random than just taking the current time stamp and PID. Edit: For reference, this is exactly how the Netscape's original SSL implementation was broken: https://web.archive.org/web/20141214141822/http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/ddj-netscape.html https://web.archive.org/web/20141214141822/http://www.cs.ber...
        justintocci 11y ago
        Understood. Working on it now.
lucideer 11y ago
Is "Greyspots" just Polymer? There seems to be no real info on the site about it?
- cdcarter 11y ago
  The code in github (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/greyspots/envelope/master/production/web_root/js/greyspots.js https://raw.githubusercontent.com/greyspots/envelope/master/...) has the Polymer copyright notice at the top, but other bits appear to be custom.
  - justintocci 11y ago
    That license is on X-tags. We use X-tags as a shim to get Web Components to work on many browsers. We use no code from the Polymer project. At the time we were evaluating we decided to go straight web components with X-Tags as a shim. I haven't kept up with Polymer but I don't think it offers database integration so its really not comparable to Greyspots in any way. Different goals entirely.
    - cdcarter 11y ago
      Thanks for clarification!
- michaeltocci 11y ago
  No, our custom elements does sound similar to Polymer but there are two main differences: we don't use ShadowDOM (polymer does) and our elements are for creating Postgres backed web apps. Greyspots has two parts: the front end and the Envelope Server. The front end is comprised of custom HTML tags and a JS library (We use X-tags to implement custom tags). The Envelope Server is a middleware replacement that exposes a fixed API from the front end to a Postgres database.
  - lucideer 11y ago
    Ah I was more thinking Greyspots referred exclusively to the front end JS library, not both sides. Cheers for the clarification.
ufmace 11y ago
How is using Postgres DB users as website users working for you? Is having thousands or millions of users practical, or is this intended more for a limited-use in house application? Is it practical to allow new users to register on the site and have a site admin manage their roles and permissions through a web interface, or do DBAs need to manage that stuff manually in psql? I worked on an internal website once on MS stack where management wanted to try and authorize access to the webapp through access permissions to the backend MSSQL database, with the Windows Domain user getting picked up automatically through IE. It was a mess to get even kinda working and to debug, and we were never able to get it all the way working.
- justintocci 11y ago
  > How is using Postgres DB users as website users working for you? Fricken awesome. Very easy to sleep at night. We can do a complete security audit in fifteen minutes. > Is having thousands or millions of users practical, or is this intended more for a limited-use in house application? Envelope is a very small C binary. You'll find it scales way better than PostgreSQL itself and as such you should be able to apply similar strategies. You'll find your database design is way more important than the Envelope overhead. If you were going to open a site to millions of users I would consider pooling users into groups so you could pool PostgreSQL connections. Again, the bottleneck isn't Envelope, but PostgreSQL. > Is it practical to allow new users to register on the site and have a site admin manage their roles and permissions through a web interface, or do DBAs need to manage that stuff manually in psql? We don't use psql. Envelope includes Postage, a sort of web based PGAdmin. Developers can use that to administrate the database. We've also written a 'User Admin' app for non-developers that we've installed into some of our client Envelope instances. This allows the customer to administrate their own users. > ...management wanted to try and authorize access to the webapp through access permissions to the backend MSSQL database, with the Windows Domain user getting picked up automatically through IE...we were never able to get it all the way working. Sorry to hear that. Our app was originally written in just a couple of hours but I didn't even know you could get the Domain User in IE. I'll have to try that.
  - acmecorps 11y ago
samfisher83 11y ago
I couldn't imagine wanting to use sql to make a site.
- justintocci 11y ago
  You write HTML documents to make the apps. Those are then stored to the file system like normal. When you load the app in the browser, the components (just custom HTML tags) connect through Envelope to your database. Also, it's not for static web sites, it's for web applications. For example accounting, wiki, calendar, address book etc. You'd never write any of the site in SQL. You do write your VIEWs, queries and any functions you need in SQL. Then you connect to those things with some of your components.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > You write HTML documents to make the apps. The front-end of the apps. Since the application layer in a typical n-tier architecture is replaced with a generic, application-neutral layer, the back-end business logic is, of necessity, all moved into the database (unless you propose moving that into the front end, which I suspect you don't.) This isn't the first time this type of thing has been proposed, and its not necessarily a bad idea, but there are a number of concerns associated with it (particularly, that scaling out a typical middle-tier is often easier than scaling out Postgres, so this approach may limit scalability of the resulting apps.)
    - justintocci 11y ago
      > Since the application layer in a typical n-tier architecture is replaced with a generic, application-neutral layer, the back-end business logic is, of necessity, all moved into the database Yes! Just like a typical desktop app! What we've done here is just simplify the web architecture down to a typical desktop architecture. > This isn't the first time this type of thing has been proposed, and its not necessarily a bad idea, All us desktop application developers agree. This isn't new at all. We use it every day. MS Access, .NET, Borland, Filemaker and many other tools used the exact same architecture for many many years. > but there are a number of concerns associated with it (particularly, that scaling out a typical middle-tier is often easier than scaling out Postgres, so this approach may limit scalability of the resulting apps.) Hmmm. I am not a middle tier scale person so I can't speak to comparison. I will point out you could easily have one Envelope serving out to ten PostgreSQL databases before you need to introduce another Envelope instance. Meanwile, Envelope is a microservice so scaling is just a simple NGINX config change. This looks relevent: http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/02/28/load-balancing-and-reverse-proxying-with-nginx/ http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/02/28/load-balancing-and-r...
MrRadar 11y ago
Did nobody else think of the old SQL on Rails (April Fools) screencast as soon as they saw this headline? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_PK1eDQyVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_PK1eDQyVg
- justintocci 11y ago
  Funny!
Tegaves1969 11y ago
I've made $96,000 so far this year working online and I'm a full time student. Im using an online business opportunity I heard about and I've made such great money. It's really user friendly and I'm just so happy that I found out about it. Heres what I do...www.Buzz34.Com
justintocci 11y ago
Special thanks to Domingo Alvarez Duarte 'mingodad' for submitting the first community pull request. Merged in three minutes!
- mingodad 11y ago
  That's the beauty of open source ! Cheers !
nestlequ1k 11y ago
Spent some time browsing around the demo. Sorry to be critical. This doesn't seem to be a web app that anyone in their right mind would want to use. It's all fun and games until your DB administrator gives you an Envelope built app that you have to use every day.
- justintocci 11y ago
  Could you be more specific? We've got customers working with apps every day and they are happy. If they weren't happy we wouldn't have had time to release it as open source...
jqm 11y ago
This looks cool, but if I'm already going to write the HTML and the SQL I'll just write the app. I already have a framework and method to do that anyway and I don't have to learn a new system or be locked to some way of doing things that may prevent customization and expansion. Not to bag on the effort though. This may come in handy for someone.
- justintocci 11y ago
  I don't understand. What we've done here is replace the web app architecture with a desktop app architecture. Desktop apps don't have customization or expansion problems so I wouldn't expect any here. Could you give me an example?
  - jqm 11y ago
    Well, to be fair, I was never fan of Access and do think it has customization and expansion problems. I have never built an app using Access, but I have gone through a few broken Access apps and re-written them into web apps. In my limited experience it allows clicker people to build themselves into trouble while making it difficult for them to fix what they build. Just my opinion though. I'm not complaining because I've made money re-writing some messes and making them functional and beautiful. Dragonwriter's reply (below) sort of sums up my view also. I am not a fan of jamming all the logic in the SQL and like a middle layer... actually need a middle layer to carry out operations on the data before it is presented. I would prefer not to use JS for this. But again.. I'm sure this project has some uses and would be handy for some people. It's a cool idea and a cool project and I commend your effort. It's just not something I personally would chose to use. Please don't take that the wrong way....
    - justintocci 11y ago
      > actually need a middle layer to carry out operations on the data before it is presented. I'm of the school that says you should fetch the data you want because the database is optimized for data operations. can you give me an example of a data operation that's best done in middleware?
foolinaround 11y ago
This is an awesome tool, and reduces complexity for the easiest of the CRUD applications. however, for anything that needs even slightly more complicated scenarios such as decisioning etc -- the SQL gets really complicated to build and test. I am suggesting that this could be extended with a possible rules engine like drools, which is bundled in, and uses an object model that is the same as the table structure. Data is fetched from the db, this data is reasoned on in the rules engine (and filtered) and this data is then either updated to the db ( sent to back tier ) or displayed on the screen ( sent to front tier ). Hence a complicated SQL query can be broken into a bunch of rules that are reused across scenarios.
- justintocci 11y ago
  We have complete ERP systems with kitting, lot control inventory, etc. all of it straight forward and easy to maintain. Plpgsql is made for this stuff. We also like having all the display handled in the html with web components. We really like the separation. I Don't think we can help you.
slagfart 11y ago
I'm a DBA who wants to make the occasional simple web-app, mostly for a small number of internal users at my company. This looks great! Thank you :)

115 points by justintocci 11y ago

We are happy to announce the release of Envelope v1.0.0 today. Envelope is a complete platform that makes building web apps on top of PostgreSQL easy. Envelope is free, open source, offered under a PostgreSQL style license, compatible with modern and mobile browsers, production ready and available today at envelope.xyz. All you need to know is SQL, and some HTML and you can publish your database as a web application with Envelope! Envelope source code is available on Github but free installers are available for Mac, Linux and FreeBSD. Visit envelope.xyz and click on "Install" to get your copy.

spyder 11y ago
The installers cannot be downloaded because when I click the buttons I get this: {"stat": false, "dat": {"error": "canonical_read_file failed"}}
- justintocci 11y ago
  fixed! Thank you!
- justintocci 11y ago
  People are trying to download from the old link. Please refresh the install page to get the latest link.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
> Envelope is a complete platform that makes building web apps on top of PostgreSQL easy. Easy when it is a simple CRUD app? When does 'easy' stop and the real work begin? >...production ready and available today... What are some production apps that have been built with this tool? >All you need to know is SQL, and some HTML and you can publish your database as a web application with Envelope! Is that all? Again, is this just for a simple CRUD app? If not, then for a substantial application, what do you mean by "some HTML"? What are the real world uses for this? I didn't really get a clear picture of that from your web site. Edit: These questions sounded a bit snarky. Not my intention. If I had a better idea of what this was actually used for it would help.
- justintocci 11y ago
  > When does 'easy' stop and the real work begin? Envelope includes the Greyspots framework which is a collection of web components that talk to PostgreSQL through the Envelope server. These web components give you all the standard widgets that you would use to put together a normal database app. For example, all the components that MS Access provides, Greyspots framework provides. Many app developers will never need to write their own widgets, but for those who do need something unique, you can copy the closest Greyspots widget (its just a Javascript web component) and hack it into whatever you need. Then you just use it in your HTML via <my-component>. More info on Web Components: webcomponents.org
- justintocci 11y ago
  >...production ready and available today... Envelope has been in production for six years. Apps in production: Foreign stocking location (barcode inventory app), Jmine (Export of a Goldmine database published to the web), all our internal apps (Address Book, Calendar, Wiki), JType (export of Suntype published to the web, Suntype is a DOS-based newspaper accounting app). Workflow Products, LLC has used Envelope for all its customers for years now. > (SQL and HTML) Is that all? Again, is this just for a simple CRUD app? I've worked with MS Access for many years and never wrote my own widget. Envelope is designed for these types of apps. You can build simple apps with no Javascript. You can easily build very full featured apps with a little Javascript but you don't need to write any widgets or extend the platform to do so.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    Ok, thanks. That makes much more sense now.
bdcravens 11y ago
> All you need to know is SQL, and some HTML So it's a reimagined ColdFusion? :-)
- puredemo 11y ago
  Having worked on CF, it's not as bad as people made it out to be.
  - bdcravens 11y ago
    I actually worked with CF most of my career, spoke at some CF conferences, and still run the Houston CF user group. Don't use it as much as I used to (moved mostly to Rails for the ecosystem), but it's still a very capable language.
    - jhardcastle 11y ago
      As someone who is still, 17 years later, running a large-ish production CF site on a daily basis, and still teaching new hires and interns to use CF every summer, I'm happy to see a little (!) CF love on HN. I've built production apps in Rails, PHP, and CF, and I've tinkered with Go, Python, etc. I still haven't found a language that gets interns from "don't know HTML" to "working dynamic web thing" faster than ColdFusion.
- justintocci 11y ago
  I admit, I don't use CF. I looked at the Wikipedia entry for it and I see its heavy on server side programming. Envelope replaces server side programming. CF uses server side programming to make components whereas Envelope uses Javascript web components on the client side. Their seems to be a lot of overlap in expected use cases. Internal apps, data-driven apps. I apologize, I can't really assert much else do to lack of experience with CF.
  - bdcravens 11y ago
    Aside from implementation details, I think the premise is the same: simple data access using SQL and rendering using familiar HTML-like syntax for markup and logic. CF of course came about at a time when browsers were far less capable (1995), so rendering is of course on server. Additionally, I think CF probably has more middleware, but I really haven't given Envelope much of a look (you really need a standard docs page)

reustle 11y ago

Really cool project, not so cool website. Here's some feedback: * Took me a minute to realize I can't scroll when my mouse is outside the center container * Drop the sticky header/footer (let them scroll with the content) * Add a bit more padding / line-spacing on the content on most pages (especially the Install page) * Optimize (scale down?) the images on the support page so they load quickly (they seem pretty heavy) Great work, though!

justintocci 11y ago
Fixed! Thank you for the feedback! I apologize for the look, none of us here are designers but we try hard. People that aren't seeing the changes need to hit refresh on their browser. I apologize for the confusion.
- reustle 11y ago
  I am no designer either, which is why every project of mine starts with Bootstrap :D
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

Canada 11y ago

I have a suggestion: Put a demo on your web site. edit: Another suggestion... use a proper source of random numbers in init_aes_key_iv(). Using the time isn't good.

justintocci 11y ago
We are working on it. We didn't anticipate the demand. Give us an hour or so.
justintocci 11y ago
We moved to: time(NULL) * getpid() * clock() Thanks!
- joelthelion 11y ago
  That's still not a good idea. Use your OS' random source.
  - justintocci 11y ago
    We wanted to avoid anything controversial. Do we need to make this configurable to make everyone happy? https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/insecurities_in.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/insecurities_...
    - MrRadar 11y ago
      Even if it isn't perfect /dev/random is a hell of a lot more random than just taking the current time stamp and PID. Edit: For reference, this is exactly how the Netscape's original SSL implementation was broken: https://web.archive.org/web/20141214141822/http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/ddj-netscape.html https://web.archive.org/web/20141214141822/http://www.cs.ber...
      - justintocci 11y ago
        Understood. Working on it now.

lucideer 11y ago

Is "Greyspots" just Polymer? There seems to be no real info on the site about it?

cdcarter 11y ago
The code in github (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/greyspots/envelope/master/production/web_root/js/greyspots.js https://raw.githubusercontent.com/greyspots/envelope/master/...) has the Polymer copyright notice at the top, but other bits appear to be custom.
- justintocci 11y ago
  That license is on X-tags. We use X-tags as a shim to get Web Components to work on many browsers. We use no code from the Polymer project. At the time we were evaluating we decided to go straight web components with X-Tags as a shim. I haven't kept up with Polymer but I don't think it offers database integration so its really not comparable to Greyspots in any way. Different goals entirely.
  - cdcarter 11y ago
    Thanks for clarification!
michaeltocci 11y ago
No, our custom elements does sound similar to Polymer but there are two main differences: we don't use ShadowDOM (polymer does) and our elements are for creating Postgres backed web apps. Greyspots has two parts: the front end and the Envelope Server. The front end is comprised of custom HTML tags and a JS library (We use X-tags to implement custom tags). The Envelope Server is a middleware replacement that exposes a fixed API from the front end to a Postgres database.
- lucideer 11y ago
  Ah I was more thinking Greyspots referred exclusively to the front end JS library, not both sides. Cheers for the clarification.

ufmace 11y ago

How is using Postgres DB users as website users working for you? Is having thousands or millions of users practical, or is this intended more for a limited-use in house application? Is it practical to allow new users to register on the site and have a site admin manage their roles and permissions through a web interface, or do DBAs need to manage that stuff manually in psql? I worked on an internal website once on MS stack where management wanted to try and authorize access to the webapp through access permissions to the backend MSSQL database, with the Windows Domain user getting picked up automatically through IE. It was a mess to get even kinda working and to debug, and we were never able to get it all the way working.

justintocci 11y ago
> How is using Postgres DB users as website users working for you? Fricken awesome. Very easy to sleep at night. We can do a complete security audit in fifteen minutes. > Is having thousands or millions of users practical, or is this intended more for a limited-use in house application? Envelope is a very small C binary. You'll find it scales way better than PostgreSQL itself and as such you should be able to apply similar strategies. You'll find your database design is way more important than the Envelope overhead. If you were going to open a site to millions of users I would consider pooling users into groups so you could pool PostgreSQL connections. Again, the bottleneck isn't Envelope, but PostgreSQL. > Is it practical to allow new users to register on the site and have a site admin manage their roles and permissions through a web interface, or do DBAs need to manage that stuff manually in psql? We don't use psql. Envelope includes Postage, a sort of web based PGAdmin. Developers can use that to administrate the database. We've also written a 'User Admin' app for non-developers that we've installed into some of our client Envelope instances. This allows the customer to administrate their own users. > ...management wanted to try and authorize access to the webapp through access permissions to the backend MSSQL database, with the Windows Domain user getting picked up automatically through IE...we were never able to get it all the way working. Sorry to hear that. Our app was originally written in just a couple of hours but I didn't even know you could get the Domain User in IE. I'll have to try that.
- acmecorps 11y ago

samfisher83 11y ago

I couldn't imagine wanting to use sql to make a site.

justintocci 11y ago
You write HTML documents to make the apps. Those are then stored to the file system like normal. When you load the app in the browser, the components (just custom HTML tags) connect through Envelope to your database. Also, it's not for static web sites, it's for web applications. For example accounting, wiki, calendar, address book etc. You'd never write any of the site in SQL. You do write your VIEWs, queries and any functions you need in SQL. Then you connect to those things with some of your components.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > You write HTML documents to make the apps. The front-end of the apps. Since the application layer in a typical n-tier architecture is replaced with a generic, application-neutral layer, the back-end business logic is, of necessity, all moved into the database (unless you propose moving that into the front end, which I suspect you don't.) This isn't the first time this type of thing has been proposed, and its not necessarily a bad idea, but there are a number of concerns associated with it (particularly, that scaling out a typical middle-tier is often easier than scaling out Postgres, so this approach may limit scalability of the resulting apps.)
  - justintocci 11y ago
    > Since the application layer in a typical n-tier architecture is replaced with a generic, application-neutral layer, the back-end business logic is, of necessity, all moved into the database Yes! Just like a typical desktop app! What we've done here is just simplify the web architecture down to a typical desktop architecture. > This isn't the first time this type of thing has been proposed, and its not necessarily a bad idea, All us desktop application developers agree. This isn't new at all. We use it every day. MS Access, .NET, Borland, Filemaker and many other tools used the exact same architecture for many many years. > but there are a number of concerns associated with it (particularly, that scaling out a typical middle-tier is often easier than scaling out Postgres, so this approach may limit scalability of the resulting apps.) Hmmm. I am not a middle tier scale person so I can't speak to comparison. I will point out you could easily have one Envelope serving out to ten PostgreSQL databases before you need to introduce another Envelope instance. Meanwile, Envelope is a microservice so scaling is just a simple NGINX config change. This looks relevent: http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/02/28/load-balancing-and-reverse-proxying-with-nginx/ http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/02/28/load-balancing-and-r...

MrRadar 11y ago

Did nobody else think of the old SQL on Rails (April Fools) screencast as soon as they saw this headline? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_PK1eDQyVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_PK1eDQyVg

justintocci 11y ago
Funny!

Tegaves1969 11y ago

I've made $96,000 so far this year working online and I'm a full time student. Im using an online business opportunity I heard about and I've made such great money. It's really user friendly and I'm just so happy that I found out about it. Heres what I do...www.Buzz34.Com

justintocci 11y ago

Special thanks to Domingo Alvarez Duarte 'mingodad' for submitting the first community pull request. Merged in three minutes!

mingodad 11y ago
That's the beauty of open source ! Cheers !

nestlequ1k 11y ago

Spent some time browsing around the demo. Sorry to be critical. This doesn't seem to be a web app that anyone in their right mind would want to use. It's all fun and games until your DB administrator gives you an Envelope built app that you have to use every day.

justintocci 11y ago
Could you be more specific? We've got customers working with apps every day and they are happy. If they weren't happy we wouldn't have had time to release it as open source...

jqm 11y ago

This looks cool, but if I'm already going to write the HTML and the SQL I'll just write the app. I already have a framework and method to do that anyway and I don't have to learn a new system or be locked to some way of doing things that may prevent customization and expansion. Not to bag on the effort though. This may come in handy for someone.

justintocci 11y ago
I don't understand. What we've done here is replace the web app architecture with a desktop app architecture. Desktop apps don't have customization or expansion problems so I wouldn't expect any here. Could you give me an example?
- jqm 11y ago
  Well, to be fair, I was never fan of Access and do think it has customization and expansion problems. I have never built an app using Access, but I have gone through a few broken Access apps and re-written them into web apps. In my limited experience it allows clicker people to build themselves into trouble while making it difficult for them to fix what they build. Just my opinion though. I'm not complaining because I've made money re-writing some messes and making them functional and beautiful. Dragonwriter's reply (below) sort of sums up my view also. I am not a fan of jamming all the logic in the SQL and like a middle layer... actually need a middle layer to carry out operations on the data before it is presented. I would prefer not to use JS for this. But again.. I'm sure this project has some uses and would be handy for some people. It's a cool idea and a cool project and I commend your effort. It's just not something I personally would chose to use. Please don't take that the wrong way....
  - justintocci 11y ago
    > actually need a middle layer to carry out operations on the data before it is presented. I'm of the school that says you should fetch the data you want because the database is optimized for data operations. can you give me an example of a data operation that's best done in middleware?

foolinaround 11y ago

This is an awesome tool, and reduces complexity for the easiest of the CRUD applications. however, for anything that needs even slightly more complicated scenarios such as decisioning etc -- the SQL gets really complicated to build and test. I am suggesting that this could be extended with a possible rules engine like drools, which is bundled in, and uses an object model that is the same as the table structure. Data is fetched from the db, this data is reasoned on in the rules engine (and filtered) and this data is then either updated to the db ( sent to back tier ) or displayed on the screen ( sent to front tier ). Hence a complicated SQL query can be broken into a bunch of rules that are reused across scenarios.

justintocci 11y ago
We have complete ERP systems with kitting, lot control inventory, etc. all of it straight forward and easy to maintain. Plpgsql is made for this stuff. We also like having all the display handled in the html with web components. We really like the separation. I Don't think we can help you.

slagfart 11y ago

I'm a DBA who wants to make the occasional simple web-app, mostly for a small number of internal users at my company. This looks great! Thank you :)