NoSQL (Document) Database Alternative?

[reinhart1010]

Since Firebase itself offers certain types of NoSQL databases (Realtime Database, Cloud Firestore) it would be great for Supabase to include a NoSQL alternative, especially document database systems. I have used Firebase Realtime Database, Apache CouchDB and mongoDB at some of my past projects.

Firebase Realtime Database has a unique data structure (e.g. no regular arrays, each database is a large Document) which makes it unique than regular document-based databases such as mongoDB, where each mongoDB "database" (term borrowed from SQL and relational databases) is considered a Collection of Document. Making an open source, drop-in replacement for it would take time and some security considerations.

However it would be possible to include a regular document-based NoSQL database such as Apache CouchDB into Supabase, so any Supabase projects which explicitly needs NoSQL can happily use the service. Several CouchDB features such as mango allows mongoDB queries to run on CouchDB databases.

[pmauchle]

Postgresql has a jsonb datatype where you can store documents like in NoSQL database and query them. https://supabase.io/docs/client/select#quering-json-data

[reinhart1010]

Oh, never thought of PostgreSQL's JSON functionality before. So in order to fully replicate a new "Collection" of "Document" (terms borrowed from mongoDB) I'll only need to create a single-column table on it?

[steve-chavez]

@reinhart1010 Yes, you can do that. However, you might want to add a primary key in addition to the JSON column so you can JOIN different collections(actually relations in this case) through supabase-js.

I recommend you check this tutorial to get acquainted with JSON in PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresqltutorial.com/postgresql-json/