public inbox for [email protected]
help / color / mirror / Atom feedRe: Describing the natural architecture for an internet-facing Postgres based app: feedback sought
2+ messages / 2 participants
[nested] [flat]
* Re: Describing the natural architecture for an internet-facing Postgres based app: feedback sought
@ 2026-04-28 05:20 Laurenz Albe <[email protected]>
2026-04-29 05:42 ` Re: Describing the natural architecture for an internet-facing Postgres based app: feedback sought Guyren Howe <[email protected]>
0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread
From: Laurenz Albe @ 2026-04-28 05:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; pgsql-general
On Tue, 2026-04-28 at 13:24 +1000, [email protected] wrote:
> Coming from a Rails/PHP/etc world. All of those communities generally hold that
> the database should be treated as a dumb data bucket with all the logic in the middleware.
>
> I’ve long thought someone should write up what the alternative architecture using
> Postgres to its fullest would look like. In order to differentiate it, I start from
> the security advantages and work forward.
>
> I’d love to get some feedback on it. Harsh criticism is most useful… :-)
No harsh critizism, but I am wary of all extremist positions.
Just as I think that it is silly to keep the database as dumb as possible,
I doubt that it is a good position to put all the smarts into the database.
One obvious disadvantage is that if you put much of the processing into
the database, most of the load will be on the database server, which is
difficult to scale.
Why not let each component do what it is best at?
Yours,
Laurenz Albe
^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 2+ messages in thread
* Re: Describing the natural architecture for an internet-facing Postgres based app: feedback sought
2026-04-28 05:20 Re: Describing the natural architecture for an internet-facing Postgres based app: feedback sought Laurenz Albe <[email protected]>
@ 2026-04-29 05:42 ` Guyren Howe <[email protected]>
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Guyren Howe @ 2026-04-29 05:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Laurenz Albe <[email protected]>; pgsql-general
Thanks for the feedback.
If you’re doing a small business application, running code in the database isn’t a concern.
If you’re doing a larger application, you’re probably sharding anyway. If you have more database servers and fewer web servers, is that actually an issue?
Updated the piece to discuss this.
On 28 Apr 2026 at 15:20 +1000, Laurenz Albe <[email protected]>, wrote:
> On Tue, 2026-04-28 at 13:24 +1000, [email protected] wrote:
> > Coming from a Rails/PHP/etc world. All of those communities generally hold that
> > the database should be treated as a dumb data bucket with all the logic in the middleware.
> >
> > I’ve long thought someone should write up what the alternative architecture using
> > Postgres to its fullest would look like. In order to differentiate it, I start from
> > the security advantages and work forward.
> >
> > I’d love to get some feedback on it. Harsh criticism is most useful… :-)
>
> No harsh critizism, but I am wary of all extremist positions.
> Just as I think that it is silly to keep the database as dumb as possible,
> I doubt that it is a good position to put all the smarts into the database.
>
> One obvious disadvantage is that if you put much of the processing into
> the database, most of the load will be on the database server, which is
> difficult to scale.
>
> Why not let each component do what it is best at?
>
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe
^ permalink raw reply [nested|flat] 2+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2026-04-29 05:42 UTC | newest]
Thread overview: 2+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2026-04-28 05:20 Re: Describing the natural architecture for an internet-facing Postgres based app: feedback sought Laurenz Albe <[email protected]>
2026-04-29 05:42 ` Guyren Howe <[email protected]>
This inbox is served by agora; see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox