Easiest light weight cloud/web persistence for Pharo?
Hi everyone - I’m wondering what is the recommended way to save some simple user data for a Pharo application I would like to run on the cloud (probably initially digital ocean, but could be AWS if it came to it).
Initially I thought I might try and run my little app in Digital ocean (I followed someone’s steps a few years ago, and had a simple seaside app running quite well) - so I was thinking of starting there.
I know there is Sven’s P3 - but I’m not sure I’m ready to run and maintain a SQL database for a simple application, but could be persuaded it its simple to setup with little maintenance. Would mongo be a suggestion - is that easy to setup and run? (And is that Voyage?).
Possibly I could even use image persistence, and fuel out a Dictionary from time to time - but I think that might be a little bit too belt and braces for me.
Is there something that gives a little table of tradeoffs with some simple ways to get started?
Tim
Maybe you can use SQlite3 in a persistent volume?
On Mon, Oct 5, 2020, 19:23 Tim Mackinnon tim@testit.works wrote:
Hi everyone - I’m wondering what is the recommended way to save some
simple user data for a Pharo application I would like to run on the cloud
(probably initially digital ocean, but could be AWS if it came to it).
Initially I thought I might try and run my little app in Digital ocean (I
followed someone’s steps a few years ago, and had a simple seaside app
running quite well) - so I was thinking of starting there.
I know there is Sven’s P3 - but I’m not sure I’m ready to run and maintain
a SQL database for a simple application, but could be persuaded it its
simple to setup with little maintenance. Would mongo be a suggestion - is
that easy to setup and run? (And is that Voyage?).
Possibly I could even use image persistence, and fuel out a Dictionary
from time to time - but I think that might be a little bit too belt and
braces for me.
Is there something that gives a little table of tradeoffs with some simple
ways to get started?
Tim
On Mon, Oct 05, 2020 at 11:23:25PM +0100, Tim Mackinnon wrote:
I know there is Sven’s P3 - but I’m not sure I’m ready to run and
maintain a SQL database for a simple application, but could be
persuaded it its simple to setup with little maintenance. Would mongo
be a suggestion - is that easy to setup and run? (And is that
Voyage?).
Possibly I could even use image persistence, and fuel out a Dictionary
from time to time - but I think that might be a little bit too belt
and braces for me.
Hi Tim,
If you are familiar with Docker then starting a database server is easy
that way. Assuming you pick a 'boring' product then what matters for
your app is the quality of the database interface code on Pharo for that
product. For PostgreSQL and MySQL no problem. I've not used Mongo itself
nor Voyage so no comment.
If you neither want to run a separate database server nor roll your own
writing out to Fuel etc, then you're looking at 'embedded' databases.
For pure Smalltalk, Omnibase or SimplePersistence. If you are ok with
something that uses FFI, then SQLite, Unqlite and probably others.
Personally I'd choose SQLite because it is boring - ubiquitous, high
quality, and importantly unlike the pure Smalltalk and many embedded
key-value databases there is a plethora of external tools that operate
on SQLite databases which will help your debugging.
For SQL databases you can also use an ORM like Glorp or ReStore.
Finally there are also NoSQL-as-a-service like Google Firebase.
Many options. Great time sinks. :-) Have fun.
- PostgreSQL - https://github.com/svenvc/p3
- MySQL - https://github.com/pharo-rdbms/Pharo-MySQL
- Omnibase - https://github.com/sebastianconcept/OmniBase
- SimplePersistence - https://github.com/seandenigris/Simple-Persistence
- SQLite - https://github.com/pharo-rdbms/Pharo-SQLite3
- Unqlite - https://github.com/mumez/PunQLite
- Glorp - https://github.com/pharo-rdbms/glorp
- ReStore - https://github.com/rko281/ReStoreForPharo
- Firebase - https://github.com/psvensson/firebase-st
- Choose Boring Technology - http://boringtechnology.club/
Pierce
Hi Tim,
I've been running Seaside applications on Hetzner cloud servers for more than a year now, with great pleasure and success: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud
I guess their servers are similar to Digital Ocean, although I haven't followed the development of their products and solutions for quite a while. Setting up a new server at Hetzner is a breeze, and you can start already for as low as €2,49 per month!
We're using Voyage on MongoDB for persistence. After learning some hard lessons (and I'm sure there are more to come ;-)), I really enjoy the unobtrusiveness of it. Most of the time, it doesn't require much attention and allows me to add persistence to real OO designs quickly and easily. I find it a welcome change from the relational database work I used to (need to) do, back when I was still doing Java. The 'everything an object' principle of Pharo/Smalltalk really makes it shine.
I can't help you with a list of tradeoffs though. If you come across a set of arguments, I'd be happy to give feedback.
By the way, I forked Sven's pharo-server-tools project (here: https://github.com/objectguild/pharo-server-tools) and have a routine going that suits me well enough. Still lots of room for improvement, but it's OK for my current needs.
Future plans are to use the Hetzner API to provision a new server and use something like Chef or Ansible to install/configure it automatically to be ready to deploy a Seaside application. I'd like to integrate this into a full service CI/CD pipeline in the future, to be able to do automated production deployments without service interruption if possible. For this scenario, I would really also like to switch to using GemStone for persistence.
Hope this helps! Let me know what you decide and I might be able to help with some technical stuff.
Kind regards,
Jonathan van Alteren
Founding Member | Object Guild B.V.
Sustainable Software for Purpose-Driven Organizations
jvalteren@objectguild.com
On 6 Oct 2020, 00:23 +0200, Tim Mackinnon tim@testit.works, wrote:
Hi everyone - I’m wondering what is the recommended way to save some simple user data for a Pharo application I would like to run on the cloud (probably initially digital ocean, but could be AWS if it came to it).
Initially I thought I might try and run my little app in Digital ocean (I followed someone’s steps a few years ago, and had a simple seaside app running quite well) - so I was thinking of starting there.
I know there is Sven’s P3 - but I’m not sure I’m ready to run and maintain a SQL database for a simple application, but could be persuaded it its simple to setup with little maintenance. Would mongo be a suggestion - is that easy to setup and run? (And is that Voyage?).
Possibly I could even use image persistence, and fuel out a Dictionary from time to time - but I think that might be a little bit too belt and braces for me.
Is there something that gives a little table of tradeoffs with some simple ways to get started?
Tim
Some great answers everyone - really appreciate it.
I think that all things considered, SimplePersistence seems like a very easy place to start, and then I can "upgrade" when my super awesome idea (not), exceeds its bounds.
I wonder if these answers should go somewhere in a tips section somewhere, and get updated yearly.
@jonathan I had forgotten about those server tools - I think the last time I did something it predated some earlier tips the Sven had given, so will check it out. Back then, I did have a GitLab build pipeline autodeploying for me, so I'm hoping I can re-incarnate all of that so I can get my little app running with no fuss... lets see.
While I have a love/hate with Docker - I did wonder if there was something for Pharo that just let me build my image into a container and then it would just work with little system knowledge needed (as I keep forgetting all the voodoo between times when I need it). Maybe there is, or maybe it might come one day soon...
Tim
On Tue, 6 Oct 2020, at 9:40 AM, Jonathan van Alteren wrote:
Hi Tim,
I've been running Seaside applications on Hetzner cloud servers for more than a year now, with great pleasure and success: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud
I guess their servers are similar to Digital Ocean, although I haven't followed the development of their products and solutions for quite a while. Setting up a new server at Hetzner is a breeze, and you can start already for as low as €2,49 per month!
We're using Voyage on MongoDB for persistence. After learning some hard lessons (and I'm sure there are more to come ;-)), I really enjoy the unobtrusiveness of it. Most of the time, it doesn't require much attention and allows me to add persistence to real OO designs quickly and easily. I find it a welcome change from the relational database work I used to (need to) do, back when I was still doing Java. The 'everything an object' principle of Pharo/Smalltalk really makes it shine.
I can't help you with a list of tradeoffs though. If you come across a set of arguments, I'd be happy to give feedback.
By the way, I forked Sven's pharo-server-tools project (here: https://github.com/objectguild/pharo-server-tools) and have a routine going that suits me well enough. Still lots of room for improvement, but it's OK for my current needs.
Future plans are to use the Hetzner API to provision a new server and use something like Chef or Ansible to install/configure it automatically to be ready to deploy a Seaside application. I'd like to integrate this into a full service CI/CD pipeline in the future, to be able to do automated production deployments without service interruption if possible. For this scenario, I would really also like to switch to using GemStone for persistence.
Hope this helps! Let me know what you decide and I might be able to help with some technical stuff.
Kind regards,
Jonathan van Alteren
Founding Member | Object Guild B.V.
Sustainable Software for Purpose-Driven Organizations
jvalteren@objectguild.com
On 6 Oct 2020, 00:23 +0200, Tim Mackinnon tim@testit.works, wrote:
Hi everyone - I’m wondering what is the recommended way to save some simple user data for a Pharo application I would like to run on the cloud (probably initially digital ocean, but could be AWS if it came to it).
Initially I thought I might try and run my little app in Digital ocean (I followed someone’s steps a few years ago, and had a simple seaside app running quite well) - so I was thinking of starting there.
I know there is Sven’s P3 - but I’m not sure I’m ready to run and maintain a SQL database for a simple application, but could be persuaded it its simple to setup with little maintenance. Would mongo be a suggestion - is that easy to setup and run? (And is that Voyage?).
Possibly I could even use image persistence, and fuel out a Dictionary from time to time - but I think that might be a little bit too belt and braces for me.
Is there something that gives a little table of tradeoffs with some simple ways to get started?
Tim
Tim,
Am 06.10.20 um 14:47 schrieb Tim Mackinnon:
Some great answers everyone - really appreciate it.
I think that all things considered, SimplePersistence seems like a
very easy place to start, and then I can "upgrade" when my super
awesome idea (not), exceeds its bounds.
Sigh. Forget about the idea that it will be easy to switch your
persistence later. There are lots of little (and not so little) things
to consider for each approach, be it an ORM, an object database or just
a bunch of serialized objects. It starts with the bookkeeping for
references between objects. Is it enough to remove an object from a
Collection or will it somehow survive in your db and come back as a
surprise after you started a new transction? Will a deleted object be
deleted or just unreachable? Do I have to care about all possible paths
to this object if I really want it to be deleted? Will my ORB possible
re-insert it in the next transaction because I don't understand how an
ORM works?
Don't fool yourself into thinking there is something like a transparent
persistence layer. If anybody ever says so, walk away, say thank you and
forget about that person as fast as you can.
I am not commenting on SimplePersistence here, I don't even know what it
does or doesn't. I am talking about experiences made with both OODBs and
ORMs like Glorp.
I've been through tough times with an architecture that I thought to be
a good idea: keep persistence in a separate layer that just spits out
objects and swallows new or changed ones. Works well in a prototype. But
on top of Glorp and with a few more than a hand full of objects, you end
up wanting to write real database queries. So you need to get a hold of
something that represents the database, say a Session object. You end up
either trying to wrapper the query building in your clever layer and end
up with friggin slow performance or give up on your nice layering to
make your application at least bearable. Sometimes you even give up
navigating between objects and replace a simple getter with a DB query
to get good performance (ever waited for 600 proxies in a collection to
each deserialize itself when accessing the #items of your Stock object?
- you better write a sql query fetching them all at once...)
You need query by example? Good luck in an Object DB. You either use DB
specific queries and hand-tuned indices, or you navigate your object net
and have the user wait a little. Or you design your object model around
the search paths (which is hard once your model has evolved a while).
In Mongo/Voyage, you need to make a decision of what objects will always
be tied closely together (referenced by a root) and can be retrieved on
their own. You think in object trees rather than objects. We've thrown
CouchDB out of our project. Not because it is a bad NoSQL database, but
because we couldn't make it work well in our overall architecture in
which the primary store is a relational Database.
So please be aware that once your app gets a little more than just a
prototype, you need to make a decision: relational, dictinaries, tree-like
I guess this is not really helpful advice. I can't really tell you what
is right. I am cursing at Glorp every few days, but I also love it for
many great things it does for us. And I've had a few very "interesting"
lessons along the way, and am still in the process of learning about its
limits.
Joachim
I wonder if these answers should go somewhere in a tips section
somewhere, and get updated yearly.
@jonathan I had forgotten about those server tools - I think the last
time I did something it predated some earlier tips the Sven had given,
so will check it out. Back then, I did have a GitLab build pipeline
autodeploying for me, so I'm hoping I can re-incarnate all of that so
I can get my little app running with no fuss... lets see.
While I have a love/hate with Docker - I did wonder if there was
something for Pharo that just let me build my image into a container
and then it would just work with little system knowledge needed (as I
keep forgetting all the voodoo between times when I need it). Maybe
there is, or maybe it might come one day soon...
Tim
On Tue, 6 Oct 2020, at 9:40 AM, Jonathan van Alteren wrote:
Hi Tim,
I've been running Seaside applications on Hetzner cloud servers for
more than a year now, with great pleasure and success:
https://www.hetzner.com/cloud
I guess their servers are similar to Digital Ocean, although I
haven't followed the development of their products and solutions for
quite a while. Setting up a new server at Hetzner is a breeze, and
you can start already for as low as €2,49 per month!
We're using Voyage on MongoDB for persistence. After learning some
hard lessons (and I'm sure there are more to come ;-)), I really
enjoy the unobtrusiveness of it. Most of the time, it doesn't require
much attention and allows me to add persistence to real OO designs
quickly and easily. I find it a welcome change from the relational
database work I used to (need to) do, back when I was still doing
Java. The 'everything an object' principle of Pharo/Smalltalk really
makes it shine.
I can't help you with a list of tradeoffs though. If you come across
a set of arguments, I'd be happy to give feedback.
By the way, I forked Sven's pharo-server-tools project (here:
https://github.com/objectguild/pharo-server-tools) and have a routine
going that suits me well enough. Still lots of room for improvement,
but it's OK for my current needs.
Future plans are to use the Hetzner API to provision a new server and
use something like Chef or Ansible to install/configure it
automatically to be ready to deploy a Seaside application. I'd like
to integrate this into a full service CI/CD pipeline in the future,
to be able to do automated production deployments without service
interruption if possible. For this scenario, I would really also like
to switch to using GemStone for persistence.
Hope this helps! Let me know what you decide and I might be able to
help with some technical stuff.
Kind regards,
Jonathan van Alteren
Founding Member | Object Guild B.V.
/Sustainable Software for Purpose-Driven Organizations/
jvalteren@objectguild.com
On 6 Oct 2020, 00:23 +0200, Tim Mackinnon tim@testit.works, wrote:
Hi everyone - I’m wondering what is the recommended way to save some
simple user data for a Pharo application I would like to run on the
cloud (probably initially digital ocean, but could be AWS if it came
to it).
Initially I thought I might try and run my little app in Digital
ocean (I followed someone’s steps a few years ago, and had a simple
seaside app running quite well) - so I was thinking of starting there.
I know there is Sven’s P3 - but I’m not sure I’m ready to run and
maintain a SQL database for a simple application, but could be
persuaded it its simple to setup with little maintenance. Would
mongo be a suggestion - is that easy to setup and run? (And is that
Voyage?).
Possibly I could even use image persistence, and fuel out a
Dictionary from time to time - but I think that might be a little
bit too belt and braces for me.
Is there something that gives a little table of tradeoffs with some
simple ways to get started?
Tim
--
Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel mailto:jtuchel@objektfabrik.de
Fliederweg 1 http://www.objektfabrik.de
D-71640 Ludwigsburg http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com
Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0 Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1
jtuchel wrote
Sigh. Forget about the idea that it will be easy to switch your
persistence later....I am not commenting on SimplePersistence here, I
don't even know what it
does or doesn't.
Joachim,
Thanks for this interesting perspective. I've never had the (mis?!)fortune
of a project growing enough to force me to make those tough choices! For
SimplePersistence I will say that I view it as a way to delay making any
choices until you are forced to. It's really just a layer of sugar on top of
Fuel (it used to use the old school Squeak equivalent serialization
mechanism - I forget the name and that might still work). You tell it what
classes to serialize. Implement two methods for each class that get and set
the data, and then it saves the whole thing as one object graph.
Tim,
If you use SimplePersistence, please keep me posted about your experience.
I'm happy to help.
NB I have maintained and extended the library, but it is the work of Ramon
Leon
Cheers,
Sean
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
Hi Pierce,
On Mon, Oct 5, 2020 at 10:22 PM Pierce Ng pierce@samadhiweb.com wrote:
On Mon, Oct 05, 2020 at 11:23:25PM +0100, Tim Mackinnon wrote:
Many options. Great time sinks. :-) Have fun.
- Choose Boring Technology - http://boringtechnology.club/
This made my day. Thank you :-)
Esteban A. Maringolo
Hi Tim,
I think that the persistence you choose will depend heavily on a few things:
- The complexity of the objects graphs in your domain models
- This architecture of your system
- How these objects/data is acceded (Atomically/In clusters)
In any case, for a lightweight solution you go the Fuel path, or something
using SQLite.
I have a GLORP based application (small, ~40 persisted classes), SQLite is
so lightweight that I run my SUnit tests creating the whole database on
disk from scratch on setUp and destroying it on tearDown), and only run it
against the production backend (PostgreSQL) before deploying, but even this
is happening less frequently since I'm confident that things will work the
same on both.
OTOH I'm finding that ORMs are burden, and unless you need to work with an
existing schema or you really want to use an RDBMS, you might be better off
avoiding them. I've been using ORMs for almost two decades, so that's still
my default choice, but I feel winds of change here :-)
Regards!
--
Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html
If you want to use docker there's https://github.com/ba-st/docker-pharo and
others that I don't remembar now that provides the basics.
You have some examples in
https://github.com/ba-st/docker-pharo/blob/master/docs/Examples.md .
We're deploying our apps as docker containers so ask any question if you
have doubts.
On Tue, Oct 6, 2020 at 9:48 AM Tim Mackinnon tim@testit.works wrote:
Some great answers everyone - really appreciate it.
I think that all things considered, SimplePersistence seems like a very
easy place to start, and then I can "upgrade" when my super awesome idea
(not), exceeds its bounds.
I wonder if these answers should go somewhere in a tips section somewhere,
and get updated yearly.
@jonathan I had forgotten about those server tools - I think the last time
I did something it predated some earlier tips the Sven had given, so will
check it out. Back then, I did have a GitLab build pipeline autodeploying
for me, so I'm hoping I can re-incarnate all of that so I can get my little
app running with no fuss... lets see.
While I have a love/hate with Docker - I did wonder if there was something
for Pharo that just let me build my image into a container and then it
would just work with little system knowledge needed (as I keep forgetting
all the voodoo between times when I need it). Maybe there is, or maybe it
might come one day soon...
Tim
On Tue, 6 Oct 2020, at 9:40 AM, Jonathan van Alteren wrote:
Hi Tim,
I've been running Seaside applications on Hetzner cloud servers for more
than a year now, with great pleasure and success:
https://www.hetzner.com/cloud
I guess their servers are similar to Digital Ocean, although I haven't
followed the development of their products and solutions for quite a while.
Setting up a new server at Hetzner is a breeze, and you can start already
for as low as €2,49 per month!
We're using Voyage on MongoDB for persistence. After learning some hard
lessons (and I'm sure there are more to come ;-)), I really enjoy the
unobtrusiveness of it. Most of the time, it doesn't require much attention
and allows me to add persistence to real OO designs quickly and easily. I
find it a welcome change from the relational database work I used to (need
to) do, back when I was still doing Java. The 'everything an object'
principle of Pharo/Smalltalk really makes it shine.
I can't help you with a list of tradeoffs though. If you come across a set
of arguments, I'd be happy to give feedback.
By the way, I forked Sven's pharo-server-tools project (here:
https://github.com/objectguild/pharo-server-tools) and have a routine
going that suits me well enough. Still lots of room for improvement, but
it's OK for my current needs.
Future plans are to use the Hetzner API to provision a new server and use
something like Chef or Ansible to install/configure it automatically to be
ready to deploy a Seaside application. I'd like to integrate this into a
full service CI/CD pipeline in the future, to be able to do automated
production deployments without service interruption if possible. For this
scenario, I would really also like to switch to using GemStone for
persistence.
Hope this helps! Let me know what you decide and I might be able to help
with some technical stuff.
Kind regards,
Jonathan van Alteren
Founding Member | Object Guild B.V.
Sustainable Software for Purpose-Driven Organizations
jvalteren@objectguild.com
On 6 Oct 2020, 00:23 +0200, Tim Mackinnon tim@testit.works, wrote:
Hi everyone - I’m wondering what is the recommended way to save some
simple user data for a Pharo application I would like to run on the cloud
(probably initially digital ocean, but could be AWS if it came to it).
Initially I thought I might try and run my little app in Digital ocean (I
followed someone’s steps a few years ago, and had a simple seaside app
running quite well) - so I was thinking of starting there.
I know there is Sven’s P3 - but I’m not sure I’m ready to run and maintain
a SQL database for a simple application, but could be persuaded it its
simple to setup with little maintenance. Would mongo be a suggestion - is
that easy to setup and run? (And is that Voyage?).
Possibly I could even use image persistence, and fuel out a Dictionary
from time to time - but I think that might be a little bit too belt and
braces for me.
Is there something that gives a little table of tradeoffs with some simple
ways to get started?
Tim