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Show HN: MVP done, now what?

5 points by marktangotango ↗ HN
I've spent about the past 6 months or so working on what I think of as 'database as a service'. Essentially hosted Sqlite with CORS support so users can post from anywhere, and execute queries saved on the backend. One of the things I'm going for is a completely in browser development experience, so there's nothing to install, the user simply uses the UI to create and edit queries and admin their database. One of the most basic uses would be posting form data from a static HTML page:

https://www.lite-engine.com/blog/post_form.html

I've posted it here before and didn't get much feed back. So I've deferred implementing any more features and wrote a bunch of documentation and blog posts. Kind reader, how would you characterize a service like this? Is Sqlite a deal breaker? Would a different database implementation be more appealing? Are there any other features that would improve the appeal of the service (ie static file hosting)?

6 comments

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davman
So I guess any 'database as a service' makes me think of Firebase, so what are your killer features over them?
marktangotango
Great point, I think of firebase as nosql and server push, what I'm offering is sql via http POST. So really not related. Firebase limits on connections, I'm limiting on request per minute, greater 1 million per month for the free tier. I haven't finalized the numbers yet though.
davelnewton
What's the benefit over, say, https://www.dreamfactory.com/?
marktangotango
Looks like Dreamfactory is something a user would host on their own servers for their own, on premises database. I'm offering hosted SQL databases, my users database is entirely hosted on my servers, and admin and development is entirely via my admin application. Seems that we're similar in offering APIs to relational databases. So the advantage would be no hardware or server admin.

I don't really consider someone hosting their own servers as my target audience, unless their looking for something like an offsite database to post telemetry to or something similar. I see users of my service being people doing serverless and Static Web folks.

davman
The idea of "serverless" apps really appeals to me. Where you can write your JS app and deploy it without having to own anything other than the domain.

This seems like it could be a key part but I'm wondering what other things a developer could tie into the get the entire "serverless" platform.

marktangotango
Yes! Personally, I think it's very exciting, just as you said. In my estimation two of the key components are a database, and user management. Lite Engine has a User API the gist being it allows users to signup to your service, Lite Engine handles sending email signup confirmations (ie click this link to confirm your registration), and handle password changes and resets, also via email. A user of my service can configure their own SMTP, or I'll send X number of emails a day on their behalf. Then users of your service can login, and perform actions based on the permissions you assign. So you know, a forum, ticketing system, whatever, as SPA's are possible. I have forum demo I'm working on that exercises all these features.

So, you could use a service like netlify, neocities, or even github pages to host your HTML, CSS, and javascript, and make CORS calls to lite-engine.com for the backend. Single page apps with no server. I think it's possible with Firebase, but I don't see anyone doing it, and I personally prefer to work with SQL for larger systems, I'm betting others do as well.