Building a real-time distributed database for the browser. This presentation was held on a Python meetup in Budapest. I talked about the initial idea of ubikDB, what are my results so far, and how I plan to continue.

1. ubikDB: an introduction
Building a real time distributed database
for the browser
2014-02-26, budapest_py
Balázs Reé
ree@greenfinity.hu
@reebalazs
Python, JavaScript web development
with open source

2. Ubik is a book of Philip K. Dick.
Ubik is an universal product.
!
shared database = persistency + notifications
syncing JSON data in the browser
real-time, responsive applications

3. Data and event flow
•
it’s a sync solution
•
networking through http
•
•
•
‘service’ could be a web
application
Database adapters
Simplest: volatile mem
storage
Clients
Server
service
JSON
DB adapters
mem
MVC…
…
JSON
MVC…

4. Firebase
•
http://firebase.com
•
“The Realtime Application Platform”
•
database as service, commercial
•
clients: web (JS), IOS / OS X, Java / Android
•
db management interface

5. Firebase raised $5,6M in 2013.
Is this possible to do
in open source?

7. Implementation choices
•
2013 Pyramid sprint
in Halle (a.k.a “Wasp
Base”)
•
Substance-D
•
syncing client data
with socket.io (via
http)
•
server connects to
database adapters
to existing DB
Clients
Server
web app
JSON
DB adapters
mem
ZODB
http,
socket.io
Pyramid (Substance-D)
gevent-socketio
gunicorn
JSON
socket.io-client
AngularJS

8. Url mapping between
ubikDB and ZODB
•
both ZODB and ubikDB has traversal based url
mapping
•
/my_folder_1/my_document_1
•
/my_folder_1/my_document_1/@title
•
/my_folder_1/my_document_1/@body
•
/my_folder_1/my_document_1/@
•
/my_folder_1/my_document_1/@/into/a/deep/structure

9. On the roadmap
•
reconnecting
•
optimised syncing of collections (use-case driven)
•
read-only (and writeable) database views
•
test coverage
•
more demos

10. Demo
https://github.com/reebalazs/ubikdb