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I agree -- this blog post is light on details. To me the value Cloudflare believes they are offering is mostly ease-of-use, particularly setup. With minimal wor

I agree -- this blog post is light on details. To me the value Cloudflare believes they are offering is mostly ease-of-use, particularly setup. With minimal work you can have a stateful, relational store available to your code. But in terms of actual database functionality, they are not offering anything particularly novel. Of course, I might be missing something. In fact, I don't see anything D1 is doing that is not already offered by something like rqlite[1], which is also a super-easy-to-use distributed database built on SQLite. Of course Cloudflare will run the database for you, which is a great help -- they take care of the uptime, monitoring, backups, etc. And that's important obviously, because in the real-world databases must be operated. Disclaimer: I am the creator of rqlite. [1] https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
I’ve been looking at rqlite for some time and it’s really great to track the product on github. I believe that the power of what Cloudflare offers here isn’t in the actual database. It’s the packaging and how it sits in their serverless world. Even with rqlite, I still need ip addresses to run a resilient system. As someone who sometimes needs a table here snd there, I really, really don’t want a server. I want a table to store a thousand records in and that’s it. This is where I would very much enjoy using something like D1. A combo of D1, R2 and Workers is a serious contender for over-the-top serverless distributed apps. This is great.
- CRConrad 4y ago
  > It’s the packaging and how it sits in their serverless world. [...] As someone who sometimes needs a table here snd there, I really, really don’t want a server. I want a table to store a thousand records in and that’s it. Sorry, but I don't get it -- WTF does "serverless" even mean here? I mean, sorry for jumping on your comment specifically, I know that wasn't primarily what you were talking about here, but... You seem to know what you're talking about, effortlessly encompassing "their serverless world" etc. The article even mentions that <<SQLite was so ahead of its time, it dubbed itself “serverless” before the term gained connotation with cloud services, and originally meant literally “not involving a server”.>> That makes sense to me; "serverless" means "not having a server". So then you have a local DB; be it SQLite or a DBF or Paradox or MS Access file or whatever. Or even a local DB software "service"; Firebird or MySQL or what have you. But the term, as it's been bandied about online for the last decade(?) or so (including in this article), seems to pretty obviously actually be about... Remote servers (that's what it talks about replicating between, right?). So what's "serverless" about that??? I've been wondering for a good while now. Anyone who has a short explanation, or link to such, please jump in and enlighten me. (Otherwise I'll have to conclude it's like "the Cloud", a.k.a. "Someone else's computer". "Serverless" = Someone else's server? :-) [Edit: Typo.] [Edit: Sigh... Two of them.]
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Sure, let me explain my way of thought. I think it’s time to get off of the bandwagon „it’s someone else’s computer”. Sure, internet services don’t live in the void and there’s always a server out there. Are the end of the day, three things in life are for certain: taxes, death, and there is a server. However, with Cloudflare specifically, you write apps that deal with individual requests. You, as a dev, never ever get exposed to a server. This abstraction goes way further than even AWS Lambda goes. There are no local caches, no temp directories, no mucking around with a shutdown of a function. Every instance of an app deals with exactly one request. That’s what I mean by „their serverless world”.
    - CRConrad 4y ago
      Thanks!

rad_gruchalski 4y ago

I’ve been looking at rqlite for some time and it’s really great to track the product on github. I believe that the power of what Cloudflare offers here isn’t in the actual database. It’s the packaging and how it sits in their serverless world. Even with rqlite, I still need ip addresses to run a resilient system. As someone who sometimes needs a table here snd there, I really, really don’t want a server. I want a table to store a thousand records in and that’s it. This is where I would very much enjoy using something like D1. A combo of D1, R2 and Workers is a serious contender for over-the-top serverless distributed apps. This is great.

CRConrad 4y ago
> It’s the packaging and how it sits in their serverless world. [...] As someone who sometimes needs a table here snd there, I really, really don’t want a server. I want a table to store a thousand records in and that’s it. Sorry, but I don't get it -- WTF does "serverless" even mean here? I mean, sorry for jumping on your comment specifically, I know that wasn't primarily what you were talking about here, but... You seem to know what you're talking about, effortlessly encompassing "their serverless world" etc. The article even mentions that <<SQLite was so ahead of its time, it dubbed itself “serverless” before the term gained connotation with cloud services, and originally meant literally “not involving a server”.>> That makes sense to me; "serverless" means "not having a server". So then you have a local DB; be it SQLite or a DBF or Paradox or MS Access file or whatever. Or even a local DB software "service"; Firebird or MySQL or what have you. But the term, as it's been bandied about online for the last decade(?) or so (including in this article), seems to pretty obviously actually be about... Remote servers (that's what it talks about replicating between, right?). So what's "serverless" about that??? I've been wondering for a good while now. Anyone who has a short explanation, or link to such, please jump in and enlighten me. (Otherwise I'll have to conclude it's like "the Cloud", a.k.a. "Someone else's computer". "Serverless" = Someone else's server? :-) [Edit: Typo.] [Edit: Sigh... Two of them.]
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Sure, let me explain my way of thought. I think it’s time to get off of the bandwagon „it’s someone else’s computer”. Sure, internet services don’t live in the void and there’s always a server out there. Are the end of the day, three things in life are for certain: taxes, death, and there is a server. However, with Cloudflare specifically, you write apps that deal with individual requests. You, as a dev, never ever get exposed to a server. This abstraction goes way further than even AWS Lambda goes. There are no local caches, no temp directories, no mucking around with a shutdown of a function. Every instance of an app deals with exactly one request. That’s what I mean by „their serverless world”.
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    Thanks!