Noms
Data
decentralized database
SHOW HN2016
508points
167comments
#19of 2,264 in 2016
Top 1%of 2016 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
16 positive, 73 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 22 critical, out of 112 comments about the project. Thread score -0.01.
Idea: 13 for, 8 againstDesign: 0 for, 12 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Interesting idea that fills a real need for versioned large data
From 3 comments
We've been struggling managing a collection of periodically updated CSVs & binaries over a few GB's in size, we struggled with Git-LFS and gave up, and we were considering…
woodcut on HNThis really piqued my interest and "next big thing" sense
ianai on HNExcellent! This has been on my "things to build someday" list for a while now. Excited to start playing with it.
nathancahill on HN
Prolly trees and the design are promising
From 2 comments
I've been wanting something like Noms for a while. Prolly trees sound really promising. In intro.md, you suggest, "If you wanted to find all the people of a particular age AND…
kragen on HNYes, we credited bup in various places, such as the design overview: https://github.com/attic-labs/noms/blob/master/doc/intro.md We were also heavily influenced by camlistore…
aboodman on HN
Objections
No query system yet, so not usable as a full database
From 2 comments
The linked page says, as its last line, "many important features are not yet implemented including a query system."
pinko on HNIt doesn't support queries. It's a datastore, not a database. This is from their FAQ. https://github.com/attic-labs/noms/blob/master/doc/faq.md
daveloyall on HN
Git-like diffs suit structure more than records
From 1 comment
I really like the idea in theory, but seeing it in practice I feel the whole thing is too concerned with being a wrapper around git handling for their dataset files. I would much…
shruubi on HN
Reinvents existing tech without enough explanation of differences
From 1 comment
Pretty impressive work but seems like reinventing wheels. Why wasn't it built upon existing tech? I think the docs should enumerate the most important differences and use cases…
paxcoder on HN
Requests
Concrete use case walkthroughs
From 2 comments
So, i realize this project is early, but it would be EXTREMELY helpful to walk through someone's use case - like, who is the target here? A business analyst who iterates on…
nartz on HNThis is really interesting! What are some ideal use cases for the current implementation? I've seen Git is considered a competitor, but Noms also appears to be a generic…
fizzbatter on HN
Benchmarks against Git and scale numbers
From 2 comments
> Also Git just doesn't scale well to larger repos or individual objects. I guess the above means that Noms does scale to larger repos... Do you guys have any numbers,…
carterehsmith on HNMy queston is on scalability. You say "large datasets" on the website. What is large? 1x/10x/100x Terabytes? 1x/10x/100x Petabytes? What kind of access rates? Etc. Very general…
pinko on HN
Merge and conflict resolution documentation
From 3 comments
I'm curious about merging. When there is a conflict, like when a file gets changed by different people, how merging is performed?
billconan on HNThis is really interesting, thanks for sharing it! I haven't had a chance to dig into the code yet, but I notice that you say two replicas of the same database can be…
nkohari on HNGC I can see a shape of solution for since you can use something like a per-object DVVset to determine the minimum set of unresolved histories required to avoid losing data…
im_down_w_otp on HN
Questions
How does it compare to Datomic, dat and IPFS
From 4 comments
At first glance, this reminds me a little bit of datomic - all data history is preserved/deduplicated, fork/decentralization features. Can you comment on how it compares?
latortuga on HNThis looks really exciting, congrats to the team for launching! Could you tell us a bit about how this compares to dat? http://dat-data.com/
lachenmayer on HNHow does Noms compare to ipfs? https://ipfs.io/
amelius on HNHow would you say Noms compares to Datomic[1]? Both projects are working on the same idea of representing a database as tree of commits over time. From my quick inspection, it…
jrsnyder on HN
How conflicts and merges are resolved
From 2 comments
GC I can see a shape of solution for since you can use something like a per-object DVVset to determine the minimum set of unresolved histories required to avoid losing data…
im_down_w_otp on HNI'm curious about merging. When there is a conflict, like when a file gets changed by different people, how merging is performed?
billconan on HN
Alternatives named
Git
From 2 comments
Git is a competitor. It is fairly common to check data (e.g., csv or json files) into Git today. However, this falls down pretty rapidly. In order to get reasonable diffs, the…
aboodman on HNVery cool. I would love to have something like this production ready. Some day... Anyone who finds this interesting may also be intrigued by Irmin [0] - a library for…
joshmarlow on HN
Datomic
From 2 comments
At first glance, this reminds me a little bit of datomic - all data history is preserved/deduplicated, fork/decentralization features. Can you comment on how it compares?
latortuga on HNHow would you say Noms compares to Datomic[1]? Both projects are working on the same idea of representing a database as tree of commits over time. From my quick inspection, it…
jrsnyder on HN
Dat
From 1 comment
This looks really exciting, congrats to the team for launching! Could you tell us a bit about how this compares to dat? http://dat-data.com/
lachenmayer on HN
IPFS
From 1 comment
How does Noms compare to ipfs? https://ipfs.io/
amelius on HN
Irmin
From 1 comment
Very cool. I would love to have something like this production ready. Some day... Anyone who finds this interesting may also be intrigued by Irmin [0] - a library for…
joshmarlow on HN