DB feature spec

Feature requirements for DB platform

Must haves

• ability to add new columns at any point (strongly suggests NoSQL)
• good JSON support
• authentication (Q from james: auth on collections (e.g. the pathogen)? on tables? on rows in tables? on columns & rows in tables?)
• permissions (i.e., authorization)

Preferred

• ability to sync local <-> master
• web interface with CRUD operations
• git-like history (i.e. easy to roll back or diff commit1...commit2)
• ability to preview changes before syncing (I (james) think this is a must have, or at least to build the tooling to show this before updating the DB)

Contenders

• RethinkDB --- NoSQL database, robust, awesome api, friendly query language, backup / restore exists, doesn't sync, but thinker adds sync functionality to rethink
• CouchDB --- NoSQL database, main feature is sync, probably the most mature platform with sync
• MongoDB --- NoSQL database, clean API, manual sync or backups through dump and import, web interfaces through community projects like mongo-express
• Horizon --- JavaScript backend, access RethinkDB database from the browser, manages sessions, auth, React-friendly
• Dat --- distributed datastore, does distributed sync really well, low-level (HTTP rather than HTML)
• noms --- distributed database, higher level than dat, deals with structured data, syncs database base instances, importantly, query system has not yet been built / is experimental
• gun --- distributed database, similar in spirit to noms, great looking API