Database Use Cases and Requirements

[mmansion]

Several requirements for using a database in the nexus project are starting to emerge. I'm creating this issue in order to track those requirements and begin researching some options. If there aren't enough use cases then it might be better to opt for simple file configurations instead.

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use cases

• storing nexus configurations
• storing composition media lists
• storing other performance data

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other considerations

Most of the requirements are going to be lightweight and the database tools should reflect that in terms of simplicity. We really don't need anything highly scalable. In fact an embedded system might be apt.

• consider using an embedded db
• should be compatible with node, have available node drivers
• should support javascript
• should be a document-based/flat-file nosql system

[mmansion]

A different consideration might be for the potential of video and media streaming. Some thoughts about having media support in the nexus are leading me to consider how streaming support from the center NodeJS server might be achieved. For this application I'm specifically targeting the Chrome browser, which requests videos using partial content requests. These could be generic flat files, but could also reside in MongoDB GridFS, which allow for larger files to be stored and served.

[mmansion]

After working on the codebase for a while and considering some of the initial data persistence requirements I've changed the db requirements and narrowed the my choice of database down significantly.

Essentially I'm interested in accomplishing the following:

• maintaining users and handling logins
• creating projects and saving to flat-files
• saving user sketches from an inter-application editor
• saving timeline sequences (another editor)
• saving settings on widgets
• saving configurations

Some of the other considerations listed above are still valid:

• I'd like the database to be compatible with node
• It should be web-centric and be compatible with JavaScript
• It should be lightweight and capable of running on smaller devices such as RPi/Beagle
• Either NoSQL or SQLite flat-file document system

I'm currently contrasting SQLite3 and CouchDB via Nano