20 posts tagged with "database"

Is MCP Dead Because of Agent Skills?​

It sometimes feels like AI is not just disrupting the old world, like SaaS, but also consuming its own children in the new one. Less than a year ago, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) was the industry's "golden child", with every vendor and platform scrambling to integrate it. Then, just 6 months later, the spotlight shifted again—this time to Agent Skills, the younger sibling that seems to have stolen much of the thunder from MCP.

MCP is trending in AI, But…​

MCP(Model Context Protocol) is undoubtedly one of the most exciting trends in AI now. Not only is everyone talking about it, but everyone is also rushing to develop their version to secure a seat at the table of the AI era. Don't feel so? Guess how many MCP servers are listed in MCP Server Directory ?

A Short History of BaaS​

In the early days of web and mobile app development, building a backend from scratch was laborious and error-prone. Developers had to manage servers, databases, and infrastructure and ensure scalability while writing the core business logic of their applications. Then came BaaS(Backend-as-a-Service), promising to liberate developers from this burden.

Polymorphism Is the Key To Open-Closed Principle​

The three fundamental pillars of Object-Oriented Programming(OOP) are Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Polymorphism. Polymorphism is likely the least-mentioned concept, possibly because this term is not frequently used in daily life. However, it is actually the most important one because it is the key to achieving compliance with the Open-Closed Principle (OCP) in OOP.

SQL databases have been powering the web since their inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Database systems, albeit sounding unfathomable and dull, have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Lots of talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and the way we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

• #1 Serverless & Edge
• #2 New Ways to Program
• #3 Better Developer Experience
• #4 Into The AI Era (this post)

Now we've come to the last part of this series. Let's get hold of the hottest trend of the year - AI, and see how modern databases enable easier development of AI-powered applications.

EDIT 4/25/2024: the feature has been released in ZenStack V2.

Prisma is a beloved ORM for NodeJS developers. As with every popular open-source project, it has a long wishlist. Here are two prominent examples:

• Support for a Union type #2505
• Support for Polymorphic Associations #1644

They are about the same thing and have received at least 1000 reactions in total. The ask is for modeling an inheritance hierarchy in the database. ORM’s responsibility is to fix the gap between the two world views: "table + relations" and "object-oriented". Polymorphism is an obvious missing piece in its mission.

SQL databases have been powering the web since their inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Database systems, albeit sounding unfathomable and dull, have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Lots of talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and the way we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

• #1 Serverless & Edge
• #2 New Ways to Program
• #3 Better Developer Experience (this post)
• #4 Into The AI Era

Let’s discuss how DX (developer experience) is becoming increasingly crucial in database designs.

SQL databases have been powering the web since their inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Database systems, albeit sounding unfathomable and dull, have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Lots of talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and the way we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

• #1 Serverless & Edge
• #2 New Ways to Program (this post)
• #3 Integration with Development Flow (coming soon)
• #4 Into The AI Era

Let’s talk about how we program against the database today.

SQL databases have been powering the web since its inception. The combination of strict schema, ACID transactions, and strong integrity makes it still the best storage choice for many apps even today. Although sounding unfathomable and dull, database systems have been a highly vibrant domain in the past few years. Many talents are devoted to it, open source projects are created one after another, companies have been striving to build profitable businesses, and VCs have been making bets on those who look like the next unicorns.

Under the flourishing surface, the new generation of modern SQL databases is renovating this 50-year-old technology and gradually reshaping how we use it to build web applications - what we do with it, how we manage it, and how we program against it. This series of articles tries to explore this topic from multiple fronts, including:

• #1 Serverless & Edge (this post)
• #2 New Ways to Program
• #3 Better Developer Experience
• #4 Into The AI Era

Let's talk about "Serverless" and "Edge-Ready" today.

I introduced how to achieve soft delete in ZenStack in the previous post below:

Soft delete: Implementation issues in Prisma and solution in ZenStack

The solution appears quite elegant with the help of the access policy in the schema.

model Post {
  ...
  deleted Boolean @default(false) @omit
  @@deny(‘read’, deleted)
  ...
}