# Datomish Datomish is a persistent, embedded knowledge base. It's written in ClojureScript, and draws heavily on [DataScript](https://github.com/tonsky/datascript) and [Datomic](http://datomic.com). Datomish compiles into a single JavaScript file, and is usable both in Node (on top of `promise_sqlite`) and in Firefox (on top of `Sqlite.jsm`). It also works in pure Clojure on the JVM on top of `jdbc-sqlite`. There's an example Firefox restartless add-on in the [`addon`](https://github.com/mozilla/datomish/tree/master/addon) directory; build instructions are below. ## Motivation Datomish is intended to be a flexible relational (not key-value, not document-oriented) store that doesn't leak its storage schema to users, and doesn't make it hard to grow its domain schema and run arbitrary queries. Our short-term goal is to build a system that, as the basis for a User Agent Service, can support multiple [Tofino](https://github.com/mozilla/tofino) UX experiments without having a storage engineer do significant data migration, schema work, or revving of special-purpose endpoints. ## Comparison to DataScript DataScript asks the question: "What if creating a database would be as cheap as creating a Hashmap?" Datomish is not interested in that. Instead, it's strongly interested in persistence and performance, with very little interest in immutable databases/databases as values or throwaway use. One might say that Datomish's question is: "What if an SQLite database could store arbitrary relations, for arbitrary consumers, without them having to coordinate an up-front storage-level schema?" (Note that [domain-level schemas are very valuable](http://martinfowler.com/articles/schemaless/).) Another possible question would be: "What if we could bake some of the concepts of CQRS and event sourcing into a persistent relational store, such that the transaction log itself were of value to queries?" Some thought has been given to how databases as values — long-term references to a snapshot of the store at an instant in time — could work in this model. It's not impossible; it simply has different performance characteristics. Just like DataScript, Datomish speaks Datalog for querying and takes additions and retractions as input to a transaction. Unlike DataScript, Datomish's API is asynchronous. Unlike DataScript, Datomish exposes free-text indexing, thanks to SQLite. ## Comparison to Datomic Datomic is a server-side, enterprise-grade data storage system. Datomic has a beautiful conceptual model. It's intended to be backed by a storage cluster, in which it keeps index chunks forever. Index chunks are replicated to peers, allowing it to run queries at the edges. Writes are serialized through a transactor. Many of these design decisions are inapplicable to deployed desktop software; indeed, the use of multiple JVM processes makes Datomic's use in a small desktop app, or a mobile device, prohibitive. Datomish is designed for embedding, initially in an Electron app ([Tofino](https://github.com/mozilla/tofino)). It is less concerned with exposing consistent database states outside transaction boundaries, because that's less important here, and dropping some of these requirements allows us to leverage SQLite itself. ## Comparison to SQLite SQLite is a traditional SQL database in most respects: schemas conflate semantic, structural, and datatype concerns; the main interface with the database is human-first textual queries; sparse and graph-structured data are 'unnatural', if not always inefficient; experimenting with and evolving data models are error-prone and complicated activities; and so on. Datomish aims to offer many of the advantages of SQLite — single-file use, embeddability, and good performance — while building a more relaxed and expressive data model on top. ## Contributing Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms. See [CONTRIBUTING.md](/CONTRIBUTING.md) for further notes. This project is very new, so we'll probably revise these guidelines. Please comment on a bug before putting significant effort in if you'd like to contribute. ## License At present this code is licensed under MPLv2.0. That license is subject to change prior to external contributions. Datomish includes some code from DataScript, kindly relicensed by Nikita Prokopov. ## SQLite dependencies Datomish uses partial indices, which are available in SQLite 3.8.0 and higher. It also uses FTS4, which is [a compile time option](http://www.sqlite.org/fts3.html#section_2). ## Prep You'll need [Leiningen](http://leiningen.org). ``` # If you use nvm. nvm use 6 lein deps npm install # If you want a decent REPL. brew install rlwrap ``` ## Running a REPL ### Starting a ClojureScript REPL from the terminal ``` rlwrap lein run -m clojure.main repl.clj ``` ### Connecting to a ClojureScript environment from Vim You'll need `vim-fireplace`. Install using Pathogen. First, start a Clojure REPL with an nREPL server. Then load our ClojureScript REPL and dependencies. Finally, connect to it from Vim. ``` $ lein repl nREPL server started on port 62385 on host 127.0.0.1 - nrepl://127.0.0.1:62385 REPL-y 0.3.7, nREPL 0.2.10 Clojure 1.8.0 Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.8.0_60-b27 Docs: (doc function-name-here) (find-doc "part-of-name-here") Source: (source function-name-here) Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here) Exit: Control+D or (exit) or (quit) Results: Stored in vars *1, *2, *3, an exception in *e user=> (load-file "repl.clj") Reading analysis cache for jar:file:/Users/rnewman/.m2/repository/org/clojure/clojurescript/1.9.89/clojurescript-1.9.89.jar!/cljs/core.cljs Compiling out/cljs/nodejs.cljs Compiling src/datomish/sqlite.cljs Compiling src/datomish/core.cljs ClojureScript Node.js REPL server listening on 57134 Watch compilation log available at: out/watch.log To quit, type: :cljs/quit cljs.user=> ``` in Vim, in the working directory: ``` :Piggieback (cljs.repl.node/repl-env) ``` Now you can use `:Eval`, `cqc`, and friends to evaluate code. Fireplace should connect automatically, but if it doesn't: ``` :Connect nrepl://localhost:62385 ``` ## To run tests in ClojureScript Run `lein doo node test once`, or `lein doo node` to re-run on file changes. ## To run tests in Clojure Run `lein test`. ## To run smoketests with the built release library in a Node environment ``` # Build. lein cljsbuild once release-node npm run test ``` ## To build for Firefox ``` lein cljsbuild once release-browser ``` ### To build and run the example Firefox add-on: First build for Firefox, so that `datomish.js` exists. Then: ``` cd addon ./build.sh cd release ./run.sh ``` ## Preparing an NPM release The intention is that the `target/release-node/` directory is roughly the shape of an npm-ready JavaScript package. To generate a require/import-ready `target/release-node/datomish.js`, run ``` lein cljsbuild once release-node ``` To verify that importing into Node.js succeeds, run ``` npm run test ``` ## To locally install for ClojureScript use ``` lein with-profile node install ``` Many thanks to ([David Nolen](https://github.com/swannodette)) and ([Nikita Prokopov](https://github.com/tonsky)) for demonstrating how to package ClojureScript for distribution via npm.