Local-First & Sync-Engines are the future. Here's a great filterable datatable overview of the local-first framework landscape: https://www.localfirst.fm/landscape
My favorite so far is Triplit.dev (which can also be combined with TanStack DB); 2 more I like to explore are PowerSync and NextGraph. Also, the recent LocalFirst Conf has some great videos, currently watching the NextGraph one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaadDmZWIzE).
How is the database migration support for these tools?
Needing to support clients that don’t phone home for an extended period and therefore need to be rolled forward from a really old schema state seems like a major hassle, but maybe I’m missing something. Trying to troubleshoot one-off front end bugs for a single product user can be real a pain, I’d hate to see what it’s like when you have to factor in the state of their schema as well
I can't speak to the other tools, but we built PowerSync using a schemaless protocol under the hood, specifically for this reason. Most of the time you don't need to implement migrations at all. For example adding a new column just works, as the data is already there when the schema is rolled forward.
Reminds me of Meteor back in the day.
Whatever happened to meteor? They made it sound so great. What I didn't like was the tight coupling to mongodb.
For me it was the lack of confirmation with the backend. When it was the next big thing, it sent changes to the backend without waiting for a response. This made the interface crazy fast but I just couldn't take the risk of the FE being out-of-sync with the backend. I hope they grew out of that model but I never took it serious for that one reason.
Yeah I built my first startup on Meteor, and the prototype for my second one, but there was so many weird state bugs after it got more complicated that we had to eventually switch back to normal patterns to scale it.
Thank you for this, I'm going to have to check out Triplit. Have you tried InstantDB? It's the one I've been most interested in trying but haven't yet.
They're also the past...