Hi All, I'm new to OrientDB, I came across it last week in my endless search for a NoSQL database to match my needs. I've been evaluating a few databases so far and OrientDB looks to be a perfect match for me. So with that I downloaded it (1.7-rc1) last Tuesday and started reading the docs, and got the server embedded into my java webapp. So far so good.
First of, I want to say thank you to all those involved in creating this project, from reading docs and groups, it sounds like Luca is the driving force, so thank you Luca and all the others involved. I want to do my part to help this product and community thrive! Now the headaches...some of these might apply to the [old] thread about adoption rate of OrientDB. 1) Documentation: It could use some help. IMO this is going to be the biggest problem to mass adoption of OrientDB. The more concise, clean and detailed the documentation is the more devs will pickup and begin using the database. I found the documentation, while large, was not very detailed or spec oriented. It glosses over topics very quickly and doesn't give detailed spec info on return types, error handling, or exception usage (from the Java API side). 2) Javadocs: Which leads me to the javadocs. I'll be brutally honest, they are pretty sad. Almost everything is left blank. I've been using OreintDB for less then a week and I already have been through a TON of the source code simply because there is no information in the javadocs. I evaluated CouchDB for 3 weeks and I never once opened up their source code. While CouchDB wasn't suitable for my needs I had to abandon it, but they have some great detailed documentation, and it's maintained for each version so I know what I'm looking at isn't for some version 5 revisions ago. This is going to slow down any new developer looking to adopt your tech...period. 3) RecordID: I really can't understand the point of having the # sign as part of the RecordID. Maybe there is some internal reason, but from a webapp js client-side point of view all it does is get in the way with AJAX urls, REST, and JQuery selectors. I would suggest getting rid of it entirely if possible. *Can someone please comment on how and why the # sign is used in OrientDB. Why wouldn't "12:34" work just as well?* This is my biggest issue right now with moving forward with OrientDB. 4) JSON: Again with the special characters, why are @ signs used to denote server fields? Why not use _ like the majority of other systems out there? Android, MongoDB, and CouchDB all use _id. It's easier to deal with JSON in the client-side browser when you don't have to worry about non-alphanumeric characters getting in the way of accessing your data, for instance: can't do data.@rid but you can do data._rid. Instead now I have to change my entire application to use data['@rid']. Ok, that one isn't that big a deal, but it makes you think "Why @ and not _?" If it used _id then OrientDB would be a lot simpler to be used as a drop in replacement for existing db's, think adoption rate. While these problems don't sound like huge issues, they do impact the speed at which new devs can adopt the technology. And in fact the headache I'm dealing with now with # chars is enough to make me find another database. I don't want too, but I have an established product and to fit in OrientDB would require some massive work to account for something as simple as a # char in an ID field. Sure I could loop over every record sent to the frontend and find/replace the # char...but why do I want to add O(n) processing to every single record I fetch for use in my frontend? How will that even work for large datasets? I hope this post doesn't come across as hostile, I'd love to help out anyway I can. I got really excited when I read about OrientDB and I would love to begin using it and help grow it. -Tony PS - While funding is always an issue and will affect the the growth of any business, I think the best thing Orient can do at this moment is clean up the documentation and get a solid stable product out the door. Press and funding will come in due time. I don't think it has anything to do with Europe vs USA, databases are global ;) -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "OrientDB" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
