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This makes sense, but also not surprised. In today's world there are countless Postgres providers (Supabase, RDS, DigitalOcean, GCP, Azure, etc) so there is pl

This makes sense, but also not surprised. In today's world there are countless Postgres providers (Supabase, RDS, DigitalOcean, GCP, Azure, etc) so there is plenty of choice now. Although I don't see why anyone would choose niche providers today other than the cloud provided ones like RDS now.

a2800276 3y ago
Because RDS forces you to deal with the AWS behemouth instead if just changing your database connect parameters.
- emilsedgh 3y ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - lars_francke 3y ago
    Not OP but even setting up an AWS Account is a roughly hundred step process. Root account, IAM Accounts, I just tried using CLIv2 which asked me to set up something called Identity center first? Billing is complicated, setting up looking and metrics... Another two services. Some other best practice things... Also extra services. AWS is complicated. There is - for me and seemingly others - a lot of value in avoiding this complexity. AWS used to be easy to use for "drive by users". It's not anymore.
    - a2800276 3y ago
      Well put, that's in essence what I meant. If you are using AWS anyway and are accustomed to it, obviously, RDS is a good choice. But I don't want to learn what DNS and Filesystem are called in AWS-speak just to shoehorn myself into getting stuck with AWS forever, when all I need is a hosted database so I don't have to worry about backups, etc. My typical situation sees small to medium (virtual) servers that run software for tens to possibly thousands of users. There are plenty of use cases that aren't "google scale" and can be operated on a simple machine and can profit from a "simple" hosted DB. Rant: Same goes for things like CDNs, I'd guess that 99% of websites don't get nearly the amount of traffic that a simple linux server couldn't handle out of the box. Let alone need sub 100ms ping responses, yet there is this weird cargo cult that requires putting your terraformed, docker stuff running javascript from with a python container with multiple layers of caching behind cloudflare because people don't dare consider simple architectures.
- jasongi 3y ago
  I would argue there is limited/no market for Database as a Service where the database isn’t hosted on the same cloud provider and region as your application. Egress costs way too much for that. So you’d assume most people are already dealing with the AWS behemoth. And if the cloud provider is providing a competing Database as a Service then it’s almost impossible to compete.
  - mythz 3y ago
    Egress costs are only expensive if you're paying the artificially high mega cloud corp's inflated pricing. I've yet to pay for bandwidth for any servers on Hetzner or for Cloudflare's services.
    - eddd-ddde 3y ago
      Also Cloudflare just released the GA of Hyperdrive which makes it even more reasonable to use Postgres with them. Also it's free!
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > Because RDS forces you to deal with the AWS behemouth instead if just changing your database connect parameters. This is one of the things I quite liked about Azure, funnily enough. They basically give you a connection string. It's not ideal, and I think for production we did something slightly different with Azure identities, but it got us going quickly, and the identities thing devops just swapped in later behind the scenes. Other than that it was just regular Postgres.
- swiftcoder 3y ago
  What? RDS supports username+password authentication for the database connection
  - jmull 3y ago
    That’s true, though you have to engage with the behemoth to get to that point.
tmountain 3y ago
Supabase provides a lot of added value regarding tools and auth with SSO, so it’s more than just Postgres.
- twsted 3y ago
  https://itsjustpostgres.com https://itsjustpostgres.com ;)
  - tmountain 3y ago
    I know you’re joking around, but it’s not though… it’s GoTrue, Storage, Realtime, Kong, PostgREST, etc.
jpalomaki 3y ago
one way to think: managing state (database) is hard. You need to manage replication, backups, version upgrades etc. Compared to this, stateless application server part is usually quite easy. If you would like to be cost effective, with small team, you could outsource the database part and manage the applications on dedicated servers.
asah 3y ago
For analytics, the database can be anywhere and the niche providers offer multiplicative performance/cost gains.
dgellow 3y ago
I had good experience with Aiven in the past, we needed something located in the EU: https://aiven.io/ https://aiven.io/
- giovannibonetti 3y ago
  It's more expensive than AWS RDS and Google Cloud SQL, but their service seems more comprehensive, with fast major version upgrade, multi-cloud deployment and built-in PgBouncer integration. For business critical operations, it is probably worth it.
  - dgellow 3y ago
    They also have (or had? That was a few years ago) pretty good support

a2800276 3y ago

Because RDS forces you to deal with the AWS behemouth instead if just changing your database connect parameters.

emilsedgh 3y ago
Care to elaborate?
- lars_francke 3y ago
  Not OP but even setting up an AWS Account is a roughly hundred step process. Root account, IAM Accounts, I just tried using CLIv2 which asked me to set up something called Identity center first? Billing is complicated, setting up looking and metrics... Another two services. Some other best practice things... Also extra services. AWS is complicated. There is - for me and seemingly others - a lot of value in avoiding this complexity. AWS used to be easy to use for "drive by users". It's not anymore.
  - a2800276 3y ago
    Well put, that's in essence what I meant. If you are using AWS anyway and are accustomed to it, obviously, RDS is a good choice. But I don't want to learn what DNS and Filesystem are called in AWS-speak just to shoehorn myself into getting stuck with AWS forever, when all I need is a hosted database so I don't have to worry about backups, etc. My typical situation sees small to medium (virtual) servers that run software for tens to possibly thousands of users. There are plenty of use cases that aren't "google scale" and can be operated on a simple machine and can profit from a "simple" hosted DB. Rant: Same goes for things like CDNs, I'd guess that 99% of websites don't get nearly the amount of traffic that a simple linux server couldn't handle out of the box. Let alone need sub 100ms ping responses, yet there is this weird cargo cult that requires putting your terraformed, docker stuff running javascript from with a python container with multiple layers of caching behind cloudflare because people don't dare consider simple architectures.
jasongi 3y ago
I would argue there is limited/no market for Database as a Service where the database isn’t hosted on the same cloud provider and region as your application. Egress costs way too much for that. So you’d assume most people are already dealing with the AWS behemoth. And if the cloud provider is providing a competing Database as a Service then it’s almost impossible to compete.
- mythz 3y ago
  Egress costs are only expensive if you're paying the artificially high mega cloud corp's inflated pricing. I've yet to pay for bandwidth for any servers on Hetzner or for Cloudflare's services.
  - eddd-ddde 3y ago
    Also Cloudflare just released the GA of Hyperdrive which makes it even more reasonable to use Postgres with them. Also it's free!
robertlagrant 3y ago
> Because RDS forces you to deal with the AWS behemouth instead if just changing your database connect parameters. This is one of the things I quite liked about Azure, funnily enough. They basically give you a connection string. It's not ideal, and I think for production we did something slightly different with Azure identities, but it got us going quickly, and the identities thing devops just swapped in later behind the scenes. Other than that it was just regular Postgres.
swiftcoder 3y ago
What? RDS supports username+password authentication for the database connection
- jmull 3y ago
  That’s true, though you have to engage with the behemoth to get to that point.

tmountain 3y ago

Supabase provides a lot of added value regarding tools and auth with SSO, so it’s more than just Postgres.

twsted 3y ago
https://itsjustpostgres.com https://itsjustpostgres.com ;)
- tmountain 3y ago
  I know you’re joking around, but it’s not though… it’s GoTrue, Storage, Realtime, Kong, PostgREST, etc.

jpalomaki 3y ago

one way to think: managing state (database) is hard. You need to manage replication, backups, version upgrades etc. Compared to this, stateless application server part is usually quite easy. If you would like to be cost effective, with small team, you could outsource the database part and manage the applications on dedicated servers.

asah 3y ago

For analytics, the database can be anywhere and the niche providers offer multiplicative performance/cost gains.

dgellow 3y ago

I had good experience with Aiven in the past, we needed something located in the EU: https://aiven.io/ https://aiven.io/

giovannibonetti 3y ago
It's more expensive than AWS RDS and Google Cloud SQL, but their service seems more comprehensive, with fast major version upgrade, multi-cloud deployment and built-in PgBouncer integration. For business critical operations, it is probably worth it.
- dgellow 3y ago
  They also have (or had? That was a few years ago) pretty good support