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SurrealDB – Document-graph database, for the realtime web

hajhatten 4y ago
satvikchoudhary 4y ago
How does it compare to ArangoDB which is also a popular open source document-graph database? What features does it add/remove?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi satvikchoudhary! It's a good question. Obviously I know of ArangoDB, but I don't know it well enough to comment on the main differences, so I'll focus on what SurrealDB is aiming to achieve instead. SurrealDB is aiming to be at the intersection of relational, document, and graph databases, whilst still remaining simple to use with an SQL-like query language, for developers coming from the relational database side. We are only at the beginning of the journey, but SurrealDB is designed to be run embedded, or in the cloud, with the ability to query it directly from a client application or from a web browser (and only access the data that you're allowed to see). With our native client libraries (coming soon), SurrealDB will be able to be embedded within Node.js, WebAssembly, Python, C, and PHP applications, in addition to running as a server. We wanted to create a database that people didn't have to manage, so they could focus on building applications, not the infrastructure. We wanted users to be able to use schema-less and schema-full data patterns effortlessly, a database to operate like a relational database (without the JOINs), but with the same functionality as the best document and graph databases. And with security and access permissions to be handled right within the database itself. We wanted users to be able to build modern real-time applications effortlessly - right from Chrome, Edge, or Safari. No more complicated backends. I'm not sure how all of this compares to ArangoDB, but happy to learn!
nerdyadventurer 4y ago
Source : https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb Features : https://surrealdb.com/features https://surrealdb.com/features
RayVR 4y ago
perhaps I'm daft, but why should I care that you've written it in Rust? The number of times Rust is mentioned on the landing page feels...odd. I love shiny new things. However, without some sense of how this compares to alternatives, it's difficult to see why I should dive down the surrealdb rabbit hole. Feature lists are ok, but what I really want is context. Why should I care about what surrealdb can do?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi RayVR, being built in Rust definitely isn't a main selling point, but it has made building SurrealDB easier. We initially built our prototype in Golang, but decided to re-write it in Rust so that we could improve on certain aspects that were hard to do with Golang. That aside, we wanted to create a database that people didn't have to manage, so they could focus on building applications, not the infrastructure. We wanted users to be able to use schema-less and schema-full data patterns effortlessly, a database to operate like a relational database (without the JOINs), but with the same functionality as the best document and graph databases. And with security and access permissions to be handled right within the database itself. We wanted users to be able to build modern real-time applications effortlessly - right from Chrome, Edge, or Safari. No more complicated backends. It's only the beginning of our journey (we're just a bootstrapped team of 2 at the moment), and we welcome all feedback!
  - arunc 4y ago
    > certain aspects that were hard to do with Golang. Do you mind sharing those aspects?
    - tobiemh 4y ago
      Absolutely arunc! You can actually see the Golang version - it's on a separate branch in the main repository. We had written our query parser from scratch (which would read character by character). This worked well, up to a point, but was hard to extend. Building in Rust we've used the nom crate for parsing, and it has enabled us to do some pretty clever and advanced stuff with the SurrealQL query language (futures, embedded JavaScript functions, while at the same time remaining performant. Other things we wrote from scratch (at the time), were our own binary serialisation framework (similar to MsgPack, but with slight differences and performance improvements). We then had to write our own serialisation logic on top of this, so that each data type would serialise and deserialise efficiently. With Rust, using the Serde crate, this is done completely differently, and allows us to have the same performance (or better), but with no custom writing of data tags! In addition, many other improvements, especially around generics mainly. It made building SurrealDB much quicker, but it also means that all data passed around throughout the system is able to be reasoned about easier. Instead of brute-forcing with the race checker, you really have to have a concrete idea of how and where your data will be used. This starts out harder (fighting against the borrow checker), but in the long run it makes writing safe and performant software so much more pleasant. I'll try and go into this in detail in one of our future blog posts!
techn00 4y ago
I've been seeing a lot of projects lately that use Rust for database-related work. How can someone get started writing a database these days?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi techn00! It's definitely taken a while for us to get to this point. We initially starting planning to build SurrealDB back in 2016, and started building on top of our initial database prototype (built in Golang) back in 2018. Over that time we've made many changes, both to the system design, and to the code, and architecture. it's just the beginning of our journey, and we've got some really stuff planned.
- apavlo 4y ago
  > How can someone get started writing a database these days? Take my class. It starts next week: https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2022/ https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2022/
  - iamlucaswolf 4y ago
    15-445/15-721 got me a job. Thank you so much for making them publicly available.
tobiemh 4y ago
Thanks for posting this nerdyadventurer! I'm Tobie founder of SurrealDB. We've got some really big things planned for the database. Any feedback is really welcome!
- mijoharas 4y ago
  Hey, random tangential question: Why do you have `user-select: none` on the page? is there a reason that you don't want people to be able to copy/paste any of the paragraphs? Or is there some other reason (I noticed as I found it jarring since I'll often select text while I'm reading it.) EDIT/NOTE: Also, I imagine it might somewhat hurt things getting spread by word of mouth. If I wanted to share this with someone I'd naturally copy some sections, paste them into a message to someone that might be interested along with a link to the site. This isn't possibly with your landing page.
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    Hi mijoharas, no reason to be honest! It's just what we've done for other sites we've built in the past - a design reason more than anything else! You're not the first one to make this point, so we'll get this removed from our site!
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    That's a really good note/point/addition mijoharas. We'll get it changed ASAP!
    - mijoharas 4y ago
      No worries, and no rush or anything. Was really just curious more than anything!
- deleted 4y ago
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- packetlost 4y ago
  What's the underlying storage engine? I've been doing some design work on a new hybrid LSM/Extendible Hashing system in Rust and am curious what this is using underneath.
yewenjie 4y ago
Somehow I don't see people getting as excited with new programming language releases compared to database releases. Maybe that is because databases require less effort to integrate in your stack?
- felipelalli 4y ago
  It's because there are a lot of good languages but no one single great "surreal" database. (I'm not saying the SurrralDB is "the one").
  - yewenjie 4y ago
    As you said, there are a lot of good languages, but not a single great one. Similarly there are multiple good databases, but not a single great one.
Diggsey 4y ago
The features are very impressive, but why should I trust SurrealDB with my data over say, PostgreSQL? Some things I'd like to know more about: - Testing strategy - Point-in-time restore? - Consistency/isolation model - Performance data - Migrations
- petepete 4y ago
  For a start, it's blazingly fast!
  - phailhaus 4y ago
    So is dumping to /dev/null. A trustworthy database needs a lot more than being fast, unfortunately.
    - tobiemh 4y ago
      Hi phailhaus, good point. We don't want to go for speed (for instance by writing to /dev/null) at any cost, but want SurrealDB to be a reliable and performant backend for any application in the long run. Obviously in our opinion, writing to /dev/null wouldn't make SurrealDB a proper database :) . We have a way to go to catch up with databases like PostgreSQL and other databases in terms of stability and performance, but we will strive to get there!
    - Zealotux 4y ago
      But is it web scale?
      - tobiemh 4y ago
        Lol. Unfortunately only /dev/null is truly web scale :) !
    - petepete 4y ago
      Don't make me start using sarcasm tags. Sigh.
    - 4y ago
endisneigh 4y ago
Benchmarks and comparisons to other popular databases? Landing says no complicated new languages but introduces SurrealQL? Would be nice to see a Jepsen test
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi endisneigh. We are currently focussed on functionality and stability. There are a number of changes to our code that we know about (https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance), that we want to make really soon, and then as soon as those are complete, we'll run some benchmarks against other databases, and detail some comparisons. It is however hard to perform these direct comparisons, as the functionality is pretty different to a lot of the database out there, but nevertheless it definitely is something we want to get to in due course!
jxi 4y ago
How does this compare with Supabase?
jxi 4y ago
Will you add support for connecting from IntelliJ/DataGrip?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi jxi thanks for the question! Our plan is to make SurreealDB accessible and usable from as many codebases/platforms/architectures as possible. We've got plans for integration into all of the big IDEs down the line, so we absolutely will add IntelliJ and DataGrip to the list. We'll definitely want to get as much feedback in this area when we get to it, so do join the community (https://surrealdb.com/community https://surrealdb.com/community) as we love all ideas and suggestions!
weddpros 4y ago
I'm glad to see a team with a new-ish approach in the DB world... I like the object-like querying! and the JS embedding. It really looks to me like SurrealDB could become big in the future, ambitious feature set. DBs take a lot of time to mature, so I want to congratulate you and wish you the best
- jaimemh 4y ago
  Thank you very much weddpros! My brother and I have been building it and building apps on top of it for 7 years now. We launched SurrealDB in public open beta 4 weeks ago. Just the two of us at the moment! We have some really big things planned for SurrealDB.
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Thanks so much weddpros! We definitely have some ambitious plans for SurrealDB, and we have lots of exciting stuff to come!
BankHottas 4y ago
I really like that the features page is so transparent about what's completed/in progress/planned
- jaimemh 4y ago
  Thank you very much BankHottas! My brother and I are building it in the open and want to be as transparent as possible. We have some really big things planned for SurrealDB that aren't on our features page, but which we will be adding very soon!
mackeyja92 4y ago
Looks very interesting. Kind of reminds me of RethinkDB with its real-time features. Was any inspiration from them?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Absolutely mackeyja92. We were users of RethinkDB back in the day. We wanted to bring the best features/functionality of NoSQL databases (MongoDB/RethinkDB/CouchDB/...), graph databases (Neo4j/OrientDB/...), and relational databases (MySQL/PostgreSQL/...) together into one platform, and then add some awesome functionality on top of it! In addition we really wanted the realtime functionality to be available when connecting directly from the browser (like Firebase), and that's something that RethinkDB didn't offer.
  - purplerabbit 4y ago
    Realtime is undoubtedly the dream... What restrictions or limitations are present for live queries?
  - dodyg 4y ago
    How do you plan to be sustainable? RethinkDB was promising but it didn't last.
    - tobiemh 4y ago
      Hi dodyg, it is our intention to provide a fully-managed cloud hosted version of SurrealDB. We'll also offer support to those companies who want/need it. But our primary business model will be the DBaaS platform. We definitely don't plan on going down the same route as RethinkDB did!
lovasoa 4y ago
The database's feature set is very interesting ! One thing to note is the license, which is incompatible with OSI open-source licenses : https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi lovasoa thanks for your comment! We did try to stay as open as possible, but unfortunately the license (as you noted) is not an actual OSI approved license. We've got a whole page about why we chose this license, what the limitations are, and how we are contributing to open source (https://surrealdb.com/license https://surrealdb.com/license). Effectively though we didn't want to limit the database usage in anyway except for preventing people from offering a paid-for hosted SurrealDB-as-a-Service. Some database companies offer a 'core' open source database, and then put their enterprise features behind an enterprise license (or close source them completely). We wanted to build in the open, but at the same time it is our intention to offer a cloud database version so that developers can get going really easily in due course. This doesn't mean that developers have to use it though :) ! Let me know if you have any other questions or points!
  - jpambrun 4y ago
    I appreciate that and fully understand, but, in many places, having a non standard licence pretty much guaranties it can't be used. I can't imagine volunteering myself to engage with legal to get this approved.. I don't need this is my life..
    - tobiemh 4y ago
      Hi jpambrun we're definitely open to comments and suggestions around this!
      - jpambrun 4y ago
        I imagine it was rhetorical, but as you probably imagined I have no suggestions. I understand your needs and imperatives, but they are unfortunately incompatible with mine. Getting a green light on using custom licence is near impossible. Procurement and contracting for database as service is also a nightmare. I think mongo and elastic could get away with it because they already had captive users. For illustration, I didn't really look at your offering, I went to the licencing section and just summarily disqualified. I am also unlikely to use it personal pet projects, because the learnings cannot be leverage in my paying job.
geenat 4y ago
Cool. Any insight to how Surreal DB compares to Cockroach DB?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi geenat, CockroachDB is an awesome database! SurrealDB and CockroachDB are quite different, in that CockroachDB is effectively a highly-available distributed PostgreSQL database (aiming at that similar functionality), while SurrealDB is aiming to merge the relational / nosql / document / and graph databases together. Hence the functionality is quite different. To make SurrealDB distributed we have built it on top of TiKV (on a side note TiDB which is built by the creators of TiKV is more of a competitor to CockroachDB than SurrealDB is). We will definitely in due course provide some documentation and comparisons with many of the other databases out there, and also we intend to do benchmarking with the other databases as soon as we have implemented a few of the performance issues that we know about (https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance)!
hiyer 4y ago
This is really cool. So do you have your own storage engine for the single node case, and you're using TiKV for the distributed one? Or is the local storage case also built on an existing engine like RocksDB?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi hiyer! We've got a single-node storage implementation using RocksDB coming this week. With regards to running in distributed mode, TiKV (and soon FoundationDB) will be able to be used for storage. In the long run we would like to build our own single-node key-value store (based on a Concurrent Adaptive Radix tree), but this is a little way off still!
  - dodyg 4y ago
    > soon FoundationDB This is super. Finally there's a reason to use FoundationDB on ordinary systems.
    - tobiemh 4y ago
      Thanks dodyg. The implementation is already in the codebase. We're just looking to get it built into the Linux version in the next release!
CSDude 4y ago
Product looks great. I totally feel the need for new open-source-but-not-for-AWS-to-steal-my-product licenses; however I'm not sure about that vague license for database would work for you. A “Database Service” is a commercial offering that allows third parties (other than your employees and contractors) to access the functionality of the Licensed Work by creating tables whose schemas are controlled by such third parties. So, if as a service provider, I control the schemas can the customers query the data using your SQL? Can I just collect data, put them to database and proxy their SQL to DB? i.e I'm the co-founder of Resmo (https://www.resmo.com https://www.resmo.com) where we let customers run SQL on their cloud/saas assets configuration, can I use yours? The current wording seems to let me because we don't let any customer to define their schema, resources schemas are defined by us, for now.
- gpm 4y ago
  It's not obvious to me that they're trying to stop you. This reads as "AWS/GCP/Azure don't steal our work" while otherwise trying to be as wide a license grant as possible. I'm sure they'd love to sell you support services, but many of these database companies do that by convincing you there is additional value, instead of trying to use licenses. I think because licenses create a scary risk that the db company might increase prices or even stop offering them altogether and you have no real recourse.
- jaimemh 4y ago
  Thank you CSDude. We wanted SurrealDB to basically be open source, but with the only limitation of not being able to provide a Database as a Service platform. So in a business or enterprise use, there is no limit at all. You can run SurrealDB with as many nodes as you want, and as many users as you want; you can provide a hosted database internally, or to employees, contractors, or subsidiary companies. The only limitation is providing a paid-for, hosted, SurrealDB database platform. After 4 years, all of our code becomes licensed with Apache 2.0 license. In addition, all of our libraries, client SDKs, and many of our core components are completely Apache 2.0 or MIT licensed (https://surrealdb.com/opensource https://surrealdb.com/opensource). We have a whole page describing the license here: https://surrealdb.com/license https://surrealdb.com/license! We would definitely like to chat if you are interested in using SurrealDB!
mackeyja92 4y ago
I wonder how this would pair with Elixir & LiveView. My initial thought is that it would work together quite nicely.
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi mackeyja92 great suggestion! We're not big Erlang/Elixir users, but we definitely want to integrate with Elixir and LiveView in due course! We actually received a suggestion to do this just yesterday! We would love to hear any suggestions or ideas in this area. Let us know in whatever way you want (https://surrealdb.com/community https://surrealdb.com/community)!
erikpukinskis 4y ago
Very cool… live queries are a game changer! What’s the testing story? Do I need to connect to your servers in order to do e2e testing? Any plans to offer a mock server or anything like that?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  hi erikpukinskis, obviously SurrealDB can be run on your local development machine, or in your own cloud, so you would never have to connect to our servers for testing. In addition, we are releasing a number of client libraries which (in addition to connecting to a local or remote database server), will also allow you to run SurrealDB embedded i the language of your choice. Coming soon are Nodejs native module (with embedded database functionality), Python (with embedded database functionality), WebAssembly (so you can run SurrealDB completely in your web browser), and C (with embedded database functionality). In due course, we want to have native integrations for PHP, Java, and Swift too (and then more to come down the line). This will mean that you could run tests without having to connect to any external service/platform/server! Let me know if you have any other questions!
catchmeifyoucan 4y ago
This looks pretty awesome! My biggest question is support for mobile. I wonder if there’s any planned integration with React Native?
- jaimemh 4y ago
  Hi catchmeifyoucan. We definitely plan to support React Native in due course. We are also happy to take any suggestions/contributions/ideas in this area to make it a really great integration.
gardenfelder 4y ago
Very interesting license structure: https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi gardenfelder, we've got a whole page on our site explaining the thought process and our intentions around the license - https://surrealdb.com/license https://surrealdb.com/license !
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nonameking2026 4y ago
It would be helpful if people would include [WAITLIST] in the title. Too many waitlist things going on - I can understand the need for it, but I'm more inclined to think "Scarcity marketing" in most cases. Of course if some new products couldn't deal with an influx of new users in a timely fashion, better to have a waitlist. But for the first N people it should be auto-accept.
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi carvking! The database can be used completely without our own cloud hosted product (for which there is a waitlist on the site). We're still a little bit away from offering our cloud hosted product, but the product itself can be downloaded, tried, hosted, and hacked on without waiting for our hosted cloud version. We're definitely not into the 'signup to our waitlist' product, just for marketing purposes. It's only there as some users expressed an interest in registering for it, as they didn't want to run SurrealDB themselves. Just to reiterate, all of our hosted cloud functionality is and will be available in the product which anyone can download and use for free :) !
  - nonameking2026 4y ago
    Ah - fair enough, my built in autocomplete needs some fine tuning. I immediately saw "join waitlist" and came to complain. My bad - be well :)
    - tobiemh 4y ago
      Haha no worries carvking! Thank you!
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typingmonkey 4y ago
I am developing a web/JavaScript database for several years now [1]. What I do not understand is, how graph based databases, (like surrealDB or gundb) plan to have great performance when they run in the browser. The thing is that you are always limited to store your data inside of the browsers IndexedDB. So as soon as you do not work with the same document-based model similar to the IndexedDB API, you will have big troubles when it comes to performance. For example how can you store and query graph based data in IndexedDB without heavily overfetching either on read or on writes? IndexedDB is already way too slow. [1] https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Forgive my ignorance but What about the file system store? Is that the same thing?
  - typingmonkey 4y ago
    There are 2 things called "file system api" in the browser. One is the "File System Access API" to store files on a users OS. This cannot be used to store data of a database.[1] The other one is the "real" filesytem api, which is not supported by most browsers. [2] [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System... [2] https://caniuse.com/filesystem https://caniuse.com/filesystem
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi typingmonkey. So SurrealDB abstracts away the document aspect of IndexedDB so it can be used as a key-value store. We then use that key-value store (in a similar way to RocksDB) to store the data in SurrealDB. You can see our abstraction layer here: https://github.com/surrealdb/indxdb https://github.com/surrealdb/indxdb . It's actually pretty performant in our tests so far, and we'll be releasing this soon as a WebAssembly library, enabling SurrealDB to run in the browser locally. I know rxdb (am a stargazer) so I'm really interested to hear suggestions or thoughts around this area!
  - 4y ago
PeterZaitsev 4y ago
Publish Code on GitHub proclaim your love to Open Source... but actually use Proprietary License...
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi PeterZaitsev, many of our core components that are used within the database are open source under the MIT / Apache 2.0 license. With regards to the core database code, it is free to use with no limits on number of nodes, data size, number of connections, number of connected users, features, or functionality. The only limit is for providing a paid-for hosted database-as-a-service. In addition, after 4 years, our complete source code for that version release becomes Apache 2.0 licensed. We've tried to keep this as open as possible for developers / businesses / enterprises to use, whilst at the same time protecting ourselves from some of the events that have happened in the database world over the last few years. It's definitely not our intention to just publish our code on Github just to pretend to be open source!
  - lovasoa 4y ago
    On the other hand, you are able to use all of the libraries that you use only because they didn't make the same choice as you, and chose truly open-source licenses... In particular, the scaling abilities of your product seem to be based on the capabilities of TiKV, which itself is based on RocksDB. These are both databases in and of themselves, and if any of these two had adopted the same license as you, then you wouldn't have been able to release the product you are releasing...
dalegs 4y ago
smarx007 4y ago
What kind of interface and format is used to work with graphs? Many graph queries (your query language looks inspired by Cypher to me) require returning subgraphs, which need to be represented as a graph and not a tree (JSON, XML, etc.). Do you support TinkerPop-like APIs or RDF formats? Or do you use any alternatives (JSON is not such an alternative, of course)?
revskill 4y ago
Does it support http webhook on table events ?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi revskill, absolutely you could do something like this: DEFINE EVENT changed ON person WHEN $before.email != $after.email THEN http::post('https://my-webhook.com https://my-webhook.com', $after); It's very flexible! We're also releasing support for the fetch() function within the JavaScript functions soon, which will enable you to do the same thing from within the embedded JavaScript functions!
AtNightWeCode 4y ago
Many warning signs with this. From ridiculous claims to license. I'm out.
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi AtNightWeCode, we're just a team of 2 developers at the moment, and completely bootstrapped. This is only our initial release, and we have a long journey ahead of us. We realise there is lots of work to do. It would be great to get an understanding of what you mean in more depth :) ! With regards to scalability and high-availability, in distributed mode you run SurrealDB on top of TiKV (and soon FoundationDB), so we don't claim to provide this functionality ourselves (yet). With regards to the license we wanted SurrealDB to basically be open source, but with the only limitation of not being able to provide a Database as a Service platform. So in a business or enterprise use, there is no limit at all. You can run SurrealDB with as many nodes as you want, and as many users as you want; you can provide a hosted database internally, or to employees, contractors, or subsidiary companies. The only limitation is providing a paid-for, hosted, SurrealDB database platform. After 4 years, all of our code becomes licensed with Apache 2.0 license. In addition, all of our libraries, client SDKs, and many of the core components used in the database are completely Apache 2.0 or MIT licensed (https://surrealdb.com/opensource https://surrealdb.com/opensource).
  - AtNightWeCode 4y ago
    The license is not really the big issue.
yawnxyz 4y ago
Hi tobiemh, will there be any plans to add native support for Svelte / Sveltekit?
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi yawnxyz - absolutely we intend to have support for Svelte in due course! We aren't Svelte users ourselves, so any suggestions or ideas are very welcome! Do let us know in the community - https://surrealdb.com/community https://surrealdb.com/community
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radiojasper 4y ago
This might be trivial to some, but I kinda hate it that I can't select text on their homepage.
metaketa 4y ago
Now this looks great, except for the lack of time travel and branching that keeps me to TerminusDb.

How does it compare to ArangoDB which is also a popular open source document-graph database? What features does it add/remove?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi satvikchoudhary! It's a good question. Obviously I know of ArangoDB, but I don't know it well enough to comment on the main differences, so I'll focus on what SurrealDB is aiming to achieve instead. SurrealDB is aiming to be at the intersection of relational, document, and graph databases, whilst still remaining simple to use with an SQL-like query language, for developers coming from the relational database side. We are only at the beginning of the journey, but SurrealDB is designed to be run embedded, or in the cloud, with the ability to query it directly from a client application or from a web browser (and only access the data that you're allowed to see). With our native client libraries (coming soon), SurrealDB will be able to be embedded within Node.js, WebAssembly, Python, C, and PHP applications, in addition to running as a server. We wanted to create a database that people didn't have to manage, so they could focus on building applications, not the infrastructure. We wanted users to be able to use schema-less and schema-full data patterns effortlessly, a database to operate like a relational database (without the JOINs), but with the same functionality as the best document and graph databases. And with security and access permissions to be handled right within the database itself. We wanted users to be able to build modern real-time applications effortlessly - right from Chrome, Edge, or Safari. No more complicated backends. I'm not sure how all of this compares to ArangoDB, but happy to learn!

nerdyadventurer 4y ago

Source : https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb Features : https://surrealdb.com/features https://surrealdb.com/features

RayVR 4y ago

perhaps I'm daft, but why should I care that you've written it in Rust? The number of times Rust is mentioned on the landing page feels...odd. I love shiny new things. However, without some sense of how this compares to alternatives, it's difficult to see why I should dive down the surrealdb rabbit hole. Feature lists are ok, but what I really want is context. Why should I care about what surrealdb can do?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi RayVR, being built in Rust definitely isn't a main selling point, but it has made building SurrealDB easier. We initially built our prototype in Golang, but decided to re-write it in Rust so that we could improve on certain aspects that were hard to do with Golang. That aside, we wanted to create a database that people didn't have to manage, so they could focus on building applications, not the infrastructure. We wanted users to be able to use schema-less and schema-full data patterns effortlessly, a database to operate like a relational database (without the JOINs), but with the same functionality as the best document and graph databases. And with security and access permissions to be handled right within the database itself. We wanted users to be able to build modern real-time applications effortlessly - right from Chrome, Edge, or Safari. No more complicated backends. It's only the beginning of our journey (we're just a bootstrapped team of 2 at the moment), and we welcome all feedback!
- arunc 4y ago
  > certain aspects that were hard to do with Golang. Do you mind sharing those aspects?
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    Absolutely arunc! You can actually see the Golang version - it's on a separate branch in the main repository. We had written our query parser from scratch (which would read character by character). This worked well, up to a point, but was hard to extend. Building in Rust we've used the nom crate for parsing, and it has enabled us to do some pretty clever and advanced stuff with the SurrealQL query language (futures, embedded JavaScript functions, while at the same time remaining performant. Other things we wrote from scratch (at the time), were our own binary serialisation framework (similar to MsgPack, but with slight differences and performance improvements). We then had to write our own serialisation logic on top of this, so that each data type would serialise and deserialise efficiently. With Rust, using the Serde crate, this is done completely differently, and allows us to have the same performance (or better), but with no custom writing of data tags! In addition, many other improvements, especially around generics mainly. It made building SurrealDB much quicker, but it also means that all data passed around throughout the system is able to be reasoned about easier. Instead of brute-forcing with the race checker, you really have to have a concrete idea of how and where your data will be used. This starts out harder (fighting against the borrow checker), but in the long run it makes writing safe and performant software so much more pleasant. I'll try and go into this in detail in one of our future blog posts!

techn00 4y ago

I've been seeing a lot of projects lately that use Rust for database-related work. How can someone get started writing a database these days?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi techn00! It's definitely taken a while for us to get to this point. We initially starting planning to build SurrealDB back in 2016, and started building on top of our initial database prototype (built in Golang) back in 2018. Over that time we've made many changes, both to the system design, and to the code, and architecture. it's just the beginning of our journey, and we've got some really stuff planned.
apavlo 4y ago
> How can someone get started writing a database these days? Take my class. It starts next week: https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2022/ https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2022/
- iamlucaswolf 4y ago
  15-445/15-721 got me a job. Thank you so much for making them publicly available.

tobiemh 4y ago

Thanks for posting this nerdyadventurer! I'm Tobie founder of SurrealDB. We've got some really big things planned for the database. Any feedback is really welcome!

mijoharas 4y ago
Hey, random tangential question: Why do you have `user-select: none` on the page? is there a reason that you don't want people to be able to copy/paste any of the paragraphs? Or is there some other reason (I noticed as I found it jarring since I'll often select text while I'm reading it.) EDIT/NOTE: Also, I imagine it might somewhat hurt things getting spread by word of mouth. If I wanted to share this with someone I'd naturally copy some sections, paste them into a message to someone that might be interested along with a link to the site. This isn't possibly with your landing page.
- tobiemh 4y ago
  Hi mijoharas, no reason to be honest! It's just what we've done for other sites we've built in the past - a design reason more than anything else! You're not the first one to make this point, so we'll get this removed from our site!
- tobiemh 4y ago
  That's a really good note/point/addition mijoharas. We'll get it changed ASAP!
  - mijoharas 4y ago
    No worries, and no rush or anything. Was really just curious more than anything!
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packetlost 4y ago
What's the underlying storage engine? I've been doing some design work on a new hybrid LSM/Extendible Hashing system in Rust and am curious what this is using underneath.

yewenjie 4y ago

Somehow I don't see people getting as excited with new programming language releases compared to database releases. Maybe that is because databases require less effort to integrate in your stack?

felipelalli 4y ago
It's because there are a lot of good languages but no one single great "surreal" database. (I'm not saying the SurrralDB is "the one").
- yewenjie 4y ago
  As you said, there are a lot of good languages, but not a single great one. Similarly there are multiple good databases, but not a single great one.

Diggsey 4y ago

The features are very impressive, but why should I trust SurrealDB with my data over say, PostgreSQL? Some things I'd like to know more about: - Testing strategy - Point-in-time restore? - Consistency/isolation model - Performance data - Migrations

petepete 4y ago
For a start, it's blazingly fast!
- phailhaus 4y ago
  So is dumping to /dev/null. A trustworthy database needs a lot more than being fast, unfortunately.
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    Hi phailhaus, good point. We don't want to go for speed (for instance by writing to /dev/null) at any cost, but want SurrealDB to be a reliable and performant backend for any application in the long run. Obviously in our opinion, writing to /dev/null wouldn't make SurrealDB a proper database :) . We have a way to go to catch up with databases like PostgreSQL and other databases in terms of stability and performance, but we will strive to get there!
  - Zealotux 4y ago
    But is it web scale?
    - tobiemh 4y ago
      Lol. Unfortunately only /dev/null is truly web scale :) !
  - petepete 4y ago
    Don't make me start using sarcasm tags. Sigh.
  - 4y ago

endisneigh 4y ago

Benchmarks and comparisons to other popular databases? Landing says no complicated new languages but introduces SurrealQL? Would be nice to see a Jepsen test

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi endisneigh. We are currently focussed on functionality and stability. There are a number of changes to our code that we know about (https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance), that we want to make really soon, and then as soon as those are complete, we'll run some benchmarks against other databases, and detail some comparisons. It is however hard to perform these direct comparisons, as the functionality is pretty different to a lot of the database out there, but nevertheless it definitely is something we want to get to in due course!

jxi 4y ago

How does this compare with Supabase?

jxi 4y ago

Will you add support for connecting from IntelliJ/DataGrip?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi jxi thanks for the question! Our plan is to make SurreealDB accessible and usable from as many codebases/platforms/architectures as possible. We've got plans for integration into all of the big IDEs down the line, so we absolutely will add IntelliJ and DataGrip to the list. We'll definitely want to get as much feedback in this area when we get to it, so do join the community (https://surrealdb.com/community https://surrealdb.com/community) as we love all ideas and suggestions!

weddpros 4y ago

I'm glad to see a team with a new-ish approach in the DB world... I like the object-like querying! and the JS embedding. It really looks to me like SurrealDB could become big in the future, ambitious feature set. DBs take a lot of time to mature, so I want to congratulate you and wish you the best

jaimemh 4y ago
Thank you very much weddpros! My brother and I have been building it and building apps on top of it for 7 years now. We launched SurrealDB in public open beta 4 weeks ago. Just the two of us at the moment! We have some really big things planned for SurrealDB.
tobiemh 4y ago
Thanks so much weddpros! We definitely have some ambitious plans for SurrealDB, and we have lots of exciting stuff to come!

BankHottas 4y ago

I really like that the features page is so transparent about what's completed/in progress/planned

jaimemh 4y ago
Thank you very much BankHottas! My brother and I are building it in the open and want to be as transparent as possible. We have some really big things planned for SurrealDB that aren't on our features page, but which we will be adding very soon!

mackeyja92 4y ago

Looks very interesting. Kind of reminds me of RethinkDB with its real-time features. Was any inspiration from them?

tobiemh 4y ago
Absolutely mackeyja92. We were users of RethinkDB back in the day. We wanted to bring the best features/functionality of NoSQL databases (MongoDB/RethinkDB/CouchDB/...), graph databases (Neo4j/OrientDB/...), and relational databases (MySQL/PostgreSQL/...) together into one platform, and then add some awesome functionality on top of it! In addition we really wanted the realtime functionality to be available when connecting directly from the browser (like Firebase), and that's something that RethinkDB didn't offer.
- purplerabbit 4y ago
  Realtime is undoubtedly the dream... What restrictions or limitations are present for live queries?
- dodyg 4y ago
  How do you plan to be sustainable? RethinkDB was promising but it didn't last.
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    Hi dodyg, it is our intention to provide a fully-managed cloud hosted version of SurrealDB. We'll also offer support to those companies who want/need it. But our primary business model will be the DBaaS platform. We definitely don't plan on going down the same route as RethinkDB did!

lovasoa 4y ago

The database's feature set is very interesting ! One thing to note is the license, which is incompatible with OSI open-source licenses : https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi lovasoa thanks for your comment! We did try to stay as open as possible, but unfortunately the license (as you noted) is not an actual OSI approved license. We've got a whole page about why we chose this license, what the limitations are, and how we are contributing to open source (https://surrealdb.com/license https://surrealdb.com/license). Effectively though we didn't want to limit the database usage in anyway except for preventing people from offering a paid-for hosted SurrealDB-as-a-Service. Some database companies offer a 'core' open source database, and then put their enterprise features behind an enterprise license (or close source them completely). We wanted to build in the open, but at the same time it is our intention to offer a cloud database version so that developers can get going really easily in due course. This doesn't mean that developers have to use it though :) ! Let me know if you have any other questions or points!
- jpambrun 4y ago
  I appreciate that and fully understand, but, in many places, having a non standard licence pretty much guaranties it can't be used. I can't imagine volunteering myself to engage with legal to get this approved.. I don't need this is my life..
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    Hi jpambrun we're definitely open to comments and suggestions around this!
    - jpambrun 4y ago
      I imagine it was rhetorical, but as you probably imagined I have no suggestions. I understand your needs and imperatives, but they are unfortunately incompatible with mine. Getting a green light on using custom licence is near impossible. Procurement and contracting for database as service is also a nightmare. I think mongo and elastic could get away with it because they already had captive users. For illustration, I didn't really look at your offering, I went to the licencing section and just summarily disqualified. I am also unlikely to use it personal pet projects, because the learnings cannot be leverage in my paying job.

geenat 4y ago

Cool. Any insight to how Surreal DB compares to Cockroach DB?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi geenat, CockroachDB is an awesome database! SurrealDB and CockroachDB are quite different, in that CockroachDB is effectively a highly-available distributed PostgreSQL database (aiming at that similar functionality), while SurrealDB is aiming to merge the relational / nosql / document / and graph databases together. Hence the functionality is quite different. To make SurrealDB distributed we have built it on top of TiKV (on a side note TiDB which is built by the creators of TiKV is more of a competitor to CockroachDB than SurrealDB is). We will definitely in due course provide some documentation and comparisons with many of the other databases out there, and also we intend to do benchmarking with the other databases as soon as we have implemented a few of the performance issues that we know about (https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/labels/performance)!

hiyer 4y ago

This is really cool. So do you have your own storage engine for the single node case, and you're using TiKV for the distributed one? Or is the local storage case also built on an existing engine like RocksDB?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi hiyer! We've got a single-node storage implementation using RocksDB coming this week. With regards to running in distributed mode, TiKV (and soon FoundationDB) will be able to be used for storage. In the long run we would like to build our own single-node key-value store (based on a Concurrent Adaptive Radix tree), but this is a little way off still!
- dodyg 4y ago
  > soon FoundationDB This is super. Finally there's a reason to use FoundationDB on ordinary systems.
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    Thanks dodyg. The implementation is already in the codebase. We're just looking to get it built into the Linux version in the next release!

CSDude 4y ago

Product looks great. I totally feel the need for new open-source-but-not-for-AWS-to-steal-my-product licenses; however I'm not sure about that vague license for database would work for you. A “Database Service” is a commercial offering that allows third parties (other than your employees and contractors) to access the functionality of the Licensed Work by creating tables whose schemas are controlled by such third parties. So, if as a service provider, I control the schemas can the customers query the data using your SQL? Can I just collect data, put them to database and proxy their SQL to DB? i.e I'm the co-founder of Resmo (https://www.resmo.com https://www.resmo.com) where we let customers run SQL on their cloud/saas assets configuration, can I use yours? The current wording seems to let me because we don't let any customer to define their schema, resources schemas are defined by us, for now.

gpm 4y ago
It's not obvious to me that they're trying to stop you. This reads as "AWS/GCP/Azure don't steal our work" while otherwise trying to be as wide a license grant as possible. I'm sure they'd love to sell you support services, but many of these database companies do that by convincing you there is additional value, instead of trying to use licenses. I think because licenses create a scary risk that the db company might increase prices or even stop offering them altogether and you have no real recourse.
jaimemh 4y ago
Thank you CSDude. We wanted SurrealDB to basically be open source, but with the only limitation of not being able to provide a Database as a Service platform. So in a business or enterprise use, there is no limit at all. You can run SurrealDB with as many nodes as you want, and as many users as you want; you can provide a hosted database internally, or to employees, contractors, or subsidiary companies. The only limitation is providing a paid-for, hosted, SurrealDB database platform. After 4 years, all of our code becomes licensed with Apache 2.0 license. In addition, all of our libraries, client SDKs, and many of our core components are completely Apache 2.0 or MIT licensed (https://surrealdb.com/opensource https://surrealdb.com/opensource). We have a whole page describing the license here: https://surrealdb.com/license https://surrealdb.com/license! We would definitely like to chat if you are interested in using SurrealDB!

mackeyja92 4y ago

I wonder how this would pair with Elixir & LiveView. My initial thought is that it would work together quite nicely.

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi mackeyja92 great suggestion! We're not big Erlang/Elixir users, but we definitely want to integrate with Elixir and LiveView in due course! We actually received a suggestion to do this just yesterday! We would love to hear any suggestions or ideas in this area. Let us know in whatever way you want (https://surrealdb.com/community https://surrealdb.com/community)!

erikpukinskis 4y ago

Very cool… live queries are a game changer! What’s the testing story? Do I need to connect to your servers in order to do e2e testing? Any plans to offer a mock server or anything like that?

tobiemh 4y ago
hi erikpukinskis, obviously SurrealDB can be run on your local development machine, or in your own cloud, so you would never have to connect to our servers for testing. In addition, we are releasing a number of client libraries which (in addition to connecting to a local or remote database server), will also allow you to run SurrealDB embedded i the language of your choice. Coming soon are Nodejs native module (with embedded database functionality), Python (with embedded database functionality), WebAssembly (so you can run SurrealDB completely in your web browser), and C (with embedded database functionality). In due course, we want to have native integrations for PHP, Java, and Swift too (and then more to come down the line). This will mean that you could run tests without having to connect to any external service/platform/server! Let me know if you have any other questions!

catchmeifyoucan 4y ago

This looks pretty awesome! My biggest question is support for mobile. I wonder if there’s any planned integration with React Native?

jaimemh 4y ago
Hi catchmeifyoucan. We definitely plan to support React Native in due course. We are also happy to take any suggestions/contributions/ideas in this area to make it a really great integration.

gardenfelder 4y ago

Very interesting license structure: https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb/blob/main/LICENSE

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi gardenfelder, we've got a whole page on our site explaining the thought process and our intentions around the license - https://surrealdb.com/license https://surrealdb.com/license !

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nonameking2026 4y ago

It would be helpful if people would include [WAITLIST] in the title. Too many waitlist things going on - I can understand the need for it, but I'm more inclined to think "Scarcity marketing" in most cases. Of course if some new products couldn't deal with an influx of new users in a timely fashion, better to have a waitlist. But for the first N people it should be auto-accept.

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi carvking! The database can be used completely without our own cloud hosted product (for which there is a waitlist on the site). We're still a little bit away from offering our cloud hosted product, but the product itself can be downloaded, tried, hosted, and hacked on without waiting for our hosted cloud version. We're definitely not into the 'signup to our waitlist' product, just for marketing purposes. It's only there as some users expressed an interest in registering for it, as they didn't want to run SurrealDB themselves. Just to reiterate, all of our hosted cloud functionality is and will be available in the product which anyone can download and use for free :) !
- nonameking2026 4y ago
  Ah - fair enough, my built in autocomplete needs some fine tuning. I immediately saw "join waitlist" and came to complain. My bad - be well :)
  - tobiemh 4y ago
    Haha no worries carvking! Thank you!

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typingmonkey 4y ago

I am developing a web/JavaScript database for several years now [1]. What I do not understand is, how graph based databases, (like surrealDB or gundb) plan to have great performance when they run in the browser. The thing is that you are always limited to store your data inside of the browsers IndexedDB. So as soon as you do not work with the same document-based model similar to the IndexedDB API, you will have big troubles when it comes to performance. For example how can you store and query graph based data in IndexedDB without heavily overfetching either on read or on writes? IndexedDB is already way too slow. [1] https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb https://github.com/pubkey/rxdb

edgyquant 4y ago
Forgive my ignorance but What about the file system store? Is that the same thing?
- typingmonkey 4y ago
  There are 2 things called "file system api" in the browser. One is the "File System Access API" to store files on a users OS. This cannot be used to store data of a database.[1] The other one is the "real" filesytem api, which is not supported by most browsers. [2] [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System... [2] https://caniuse.com/filesystem https://caniuse.com/filesystem
tobiemh 4y ago
Hi typingmonkey. So SurrealDB abstracts away the document aspect of IndexedDB so it can be used as a key-value store. We then use that key-value store (in a similar way to RocksDB) to store the data in SurrealDB. You can see our abstraction layer here: https://github.com/surrealdb/indxdb https://github.com/surrealdb/indxdb . It's actually pretty performant in our tests so far, and we'll be releasing this soon as a WebAssembly library, enabling SurrealDB to run in the browser locally. I know rxdb (am a stargazer) so I'm really interested to hear suggestions or thoughts around this area!
- 4y ago

PeterZaitsev 4y ago

Publish Code on GitHub proclaim your love to Open Source... but actually use Proprietary License...

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi PeterZaitsev, many of our core components that are used within the database are open source under the MIT / Apache 2.0 license. With regards to the core database code, it is free to use with no limits on number of nodes, data size, number of connections, number of connected users, features, or functionality. The only limit is for providing a paid-for hosted database-as-a-service. In addition, after 4 years, our complete source code for that version release becomes Apache 2.0 licensed. We've tried to keep this as open as possible for developers / businesses / enterprises to use, whilst at the same time protecting ourselves from some of the events that have happened in the database world over the last few years. It's definitely not our intention to just publish our code on Github just to pretend to be open source!
- lovasoa 4y ago
  On the other hand, you are able to use all of the libraries that you use only because they didn't make the same choice as you, and chose truly open-source licenses... In particular, the scaling abilities of your product seem to be based on the capabilities of TiKV, which itself is based on RocksDB. These are both databases in and of themselves, and if any of these two had adopted the same license as you, then you wouldn't have been able to release the product you are releasing...

dalegs 4y ago

smarx007 4y ago

What kind of interface and format is used to work with graphs? Many graph queries (your query language looks inspired by Cypher to me) require returning subgraphs, which need to be represented as a graph and not a tree (JSON, XML, etc.). Do you support TinkerPop-like APIs or RDF formats? Or do you use any alternatives (JSON is not such an alternative, of course)?

revskill 4y ago

Does it support http webhook on table events ?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi revskill, absolutely you could do something like this: DEFINE EVENT changed ON person WHEN $before.email != $after.email THEN http::post('https://my-webhook.com https://my-webhook.com', $after); It's very flexible! We're also releasing support for the fetch() function within the JavaScript functions soon, which will enable you to do the same thing from within the embedded JavaScript functions!

AtNightWeCode 4y ago

Many warning signs with this. From ridiculous claims to license. I'm out.

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi AtNightWeCode, we're just a team of 2 developers at the moment, and completely bootstrapped. This is only our initial release, and we have a long journey ahead of us. We realise there is lots of work to do. It would be great to get an understanding of what you mean in more depth :) ! With regards to scalability and high-availability, in distributed mode you run SurrealDB on top of TiKV (and soon FoundationDB), so we don't claim to provide this functionality ourselves (yet). With regards to the license we wanted SurrealDB to basically be open source, but with the only limitation of not being able to provide a Database as a Service platform. So in a business or enterprise use, there is no limit at all. You can run SurrealDB with as many nodes as you want, and as many users as you want; you can provide a hosted database internally, or to employees, contractors, or subsidiary companies. The only limitation is providing a paid-for, hosted, SurrealDB database platform. After 4 years, all of our code becomes licensed with Apache 2.0 license. In addition, all of our libraries, client SDKs, and many of the core components used in the database are completely Apache 2.0 or MIT licensed (https://surrealdb.com/opensource https://surrealdb.com/opensource).
- AtNightWeCode 4y ago
  The license is not really the big issue.

yawnxyz 4y ago

Hi tobiemh, will there be any plans to add native support for Svelte / Sveltekit?

tobiemh 4y ago
Hi yawnxyz - absolutely we intend to have support for Svelte in due course! We aren't Svelte users ourselves, so any suggestions or ideas are very welcome! Do let us know in the community - https://surrealdb.com/community https://surrealdb.com/community

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radiojasper 4y ago

This might be trivial to some, but I kinda hate it that I can't select text on their homepage.

metaketa 4y ago

Now this looks great, except for the lack of time travel and branching that keeps me to TerminusDb.