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> I'm on firebase/cloud functions. I pay ~$10/month for their smallest cloud sql postgres instance I don't know much about firebase. How does firebase relate t

> I'm on firebase/cloud functions. I pay ~$10/month for their smallest cloud sql postgres instance I don't know much about firebase. How does firebase relate to postgresql?

elitan 6y ago
I was thinking about this too. I think the main reason you'd want to use Nhost instead of Firebase is for the tech we use. Mainly Postgres and GraphQL and how we got all services (database, api, auth, storage) working together very nicely, just like Firebase.
latchkey 6y ago
Firebase is a whole suite of tools/services for building online apps. These apps can do things, like talk to a database. Cloud Firestore is a nosql database offering on Firebase. Cloud SQL Postgres is a database offering on GCP. Firebase Cloud Functions (FCF) are 'serverless functions'. You upload some code that looks like an Express app. I personally use the npm package 'apollo-server-cloud-functions' to provide Apollo Server GraphQL endpoints using 'type-graphql'. If you do it right, there is very little vendor lockin. I theoretically could use this same code on Nhost. Since it is all Google, Firebase can 'talk' to anything on GCP. Thus, my FCF can use 'mikro-orm' to talk to my cloud sql postgres database. I know, a lot of names... but once you wrap your head around it all, it starts to get a bit easier. The nice thing about all of this is that I get one small usage based bill every month and it just magically runs without any devops or thought on my part.
- mescalito 6y ago
  What do you run on it or use it for? Anything to share?
  - latchkey 6y ago
    I have an iOS Flutter and a webapp that talks to this as a backend for my business. It is private and all low usage, but I like the idea that this is infinitely scalable and doesn't require any effort to maintain.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Infinitely scalable's a bit of myth in my experience. We've switched firebase app to a small postgres instance and have seen all of our performance issues magically melt away.
      - latchkey 6y ago
        Firebase is a service that encompasses a bunch of things. Do you mean Cloud Firestore? To be clear, when I reference the infinite scalability, I mean the ability of cloud functions to spin up as many instances as I need. In terms of database load, I'd fully expect to have to migrate to a larger instance, but that is also relatively easy with cloud sql postgres.
        wdb 6y ago
        Cloud Firestore how does that relate to Datastore? Really wish Google would allow multi-region Cloud SQL like AWS allows with RDS. Datastore is such a pain to use with its index requirements
        nicoburns 6y ago
        Firestore is the next generation: https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/firestore-or-datastore https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/firestore-or-datasto...
        nicoburns 6y ago
        Ah yeah, I was mostly talking about the database offerings. The cloud functions can scale infinitely.
        latchkey 6y ago
        Cloud Firestore scales just fine, like any database, you have to know how to work with it. You switched from a nosql database to a sql database... two totally different performance profiles.

> I'm on firebase/cloud functions. I pay ~$10/month for their smallest cloud sql postgres instance I don't know much about firebase. How does firebase relate to postgresql?

elitan 6y ago

I was thinking about this too. I think the main reason you'd want to use Nhost instead of Firebase is for the tech we use. Mainly Postgres and GraphQL and how we got all services (database, api, auth, storage) working together very nicely, just like Firebase.

latchkey 6y ago

Firebase is a whole suite of tools/services for building online apps. These apps can do things, like talk to a database. Cloud Firestore is a nosql database offering on Firebase. Cloud SQL Postgres is a database offering on GCP. Firebase Cloud Functions (FCF) are 'serverless functions'. You upload some code that looks like an Express app. I personally use the npm package 'apollo-server-cloud-functions' to provide Apollo Server GraphQL endpoints using 'type-graphql'. If you do it right, there is very little vendor lockin. I theoretically could use this same code on Nhost. Since it is all Google, Firebase can 'talk' to anything on GCP. Thus, my FCF can use 'mikro-orm' to talk to my cloud sql postgres database. I know, a lot of names... but once you wrap your head around it all, it starts to get a bit easier. The nice thing about all of this is that I get one small usage based bill every month and it just magically runs without any devops or thought on my part.

mescalito 6y ago
What do you run on it or use it for? Anything to share?
- latchkey 6y ago
  I have an iOS Flutter and a webapp that talks to this as a backend for my business. It is private and all low usage, but I like the idea that this is infinitely scalable and doesn't require any effort to maintain.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Infinitely scalable's a bit of myth in my experience. We've switched firebase app to a small postgres instance and have seen all of our performance issues magically melt away.
    - latchkey 6y ago
      Firebase is a service that encompasses a bunch of things. Do you mean Cloud Firestore? To be clear, when I reference the infinite scalability, I mean the ability of cloud functions to spin up as many instances as I need. In terms of database load, I'd fully expect to have to migrate to a larger instance, but that is also relatively easy with cloud sql postgres.
      - wdb 6y ago
        Cloud Firestore how does that relate to Datastore? Really wish Google would allow multi-region Cloud SQL like AWS allows with RDS. Datastore is such a pain to use with its index requirements
        nicoburns 6y ago
        Firestore is the next generation: https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/firestore-or-datastore https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/firestore-or-datasto...
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        Ah yeah, I was mostly talking about the database offerings. The cloud functions can scale infinitely.
        latchkey 6y ago
        Cloud Firestore scales just fine, like any database, you have to know how to work with it. You switched from a nosql database to a sql database... two totally different performance profiles.