We wrote Mety, a simple non-relational database to make web development simpler

7 points by fedd ↗ HN
The idea is to let it be used inline the web page template almost just as objects with properties, but persisted. You get and put values to objects fields, and they are stored in the database and available to be queried later the same way as they were put.

Right now it's a Java library, and the main way to work with Mety is to access the stored objects from JSP page with it's EL expression language, like this: ${user[z.name].val} or even ${user.name}. (Please see http://vsetec.com)

There are no conventions how to name symbols, it's not an object-relational mapping, but there are some rules how to access fields or iterate objects. The dots and brackets expression is not only readable, but you can put the value (of any type, including sets and other objects) into it.

No additional schema definition is needed: as you put the value, the same way you access it later.

As a non-relational database it doesn't use SQL to query it, but it differs from NoSQL trend as it's not yet focused on heavy workloads and Big Data, though we plan to implement 'sharding'.

What do you think about this idea? Shall we improve it further, make a Javascript library so it could be used the same way from browsers and Node.js? Would it be interesting?

3 comments

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(comment deleted)
It doesn't seem to solve a real problem. If I want to store stuff through js, why not just store it to couchdb or such? That's probably just as easy.
That would be as easy if there is some ORM-like library for the nosql database: you change value in a js object, and it gets persisted automatically. But how easy is it to set it up and tune?