Re:Show HN: Announcing the FaunaDB Add-On for Netlify
by evanweaver on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @06:46AM
(#20938551)
Optional write-time validations are on the roadmap. FaunaDB does enforce unique constraints via indexes already.
FaunaDB is temporal as well and people don't really enjoy migrating the past, so it has to be a little different than a traditional RDBMS schema. But ultimately it will be more flexible as well.
Thing is, there's always a schema. Code always expects data to look a particular way. Whether it's written down and enforced by the DB or not will have a great influence on your ability to reason about your system and make changes down the line.
This sounds like the same mistakes of Mongo all over again. Databases that don't require and enforce schemas trade a degree of early flexibility and development speed for a future of confusion, hacks and workarounds, and lower velocity.
Most people who make this tradeoff aren't aware they're making it. The rest of us use RDBMS.
(I get that you work for the company and I don't expect this comment to change anything - except hopefully the mind of someone contemplating using a no-schema database)