LULukeEF·Oct 8, 2021
Few git-inspired version controlled databases out there if performance becomes an issue. Dolt & TerminusDB are the most prominent.
https://github.com/terminusdb/terminusdb
https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
In Git as a Storagedolthub
dolt
Go2019–2026
dolthub / dolt
dolt
Dolt – Git for Data
42Distinct people
76Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
24.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Dolt – Git for Data
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
- attic-labs/noms · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- mgramin/awesome-db-tools · linked in 2 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 12:45:45 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year76 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-08-06 22:43:54 UTC to 2026-04-14 23:55:55 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 19 | 2 | 17 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 4 | 10 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 2 | 10 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
14 sourcesYou should check out dolt, does exactly what you're describing, and is a drop-in MySQL replacement:
https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
In Ask HN: What could a modern database do that PostgreSQL and MySQL can't[EDIT] While I am critical of dolt below, to dolt's credit, it is open source and the DB is self-hostable[2], and it looks like you can use it without registering for DoltHub. That said, it doesn't look like you can self-host the thing you log into (the "remote_host"), the docs suggest that you can only login to DoltHub.
> I think you may have jumped the gun on this statement. Dolthub is a bit like github for data.
I might have, but only because of what Dolthub is right now. Microsoft didn't buy GitHub for no reason, and under Dolthub will get the bright idea to increase their revenues by restricting access to the "open" data sets at some point. The client is open source because it's essentially a loss leader for the platform -- this is like AWS open sourcing the aws or SDKs -- the point is to get you to start depending on dolt.
If this
Read the rest
data is "open" (for some definition of "open", that evidently not everyone agrees with), I should be able to download it without logging in, without downloading dolt, knowing what dolthub is. Compare what dolthub is doing to OSM[0]. Now holding and distributing data is not free, but that is also not what dolthub is doing here (and if it was there are some other options for trying to reduce cost in that way).
> You can clone the entire database without so much as a login right now, see the clone drop down situated in a similar location as it appears on github. (It is 165GB)
Again right now you can. Making the site look like github is fine, I don't care about that -- the problem is that to do anything I don't download `git`, I download `dolt`.
> The data changes over time so it is possible they will stop publishing it. Also note that this data is open to begin with and they are just aggregating it, though from a quick glace doing a nice job of it. Under HHS/CMS rules hospitals have had to publish a price index since january of this year.
OK, so this is one thing that annoyed me in particular -- it was very hard to find the ACTUAL source of this data. They have indeed done contributing work here in pulling the sources together (the data is scattered), but why not include a list of the actual sources? After some looking, here's an example with Ascension[1]. If this was a real Github repo, I'd be able to look at the source (that's the whole point of "open" source), not just the data. I guess this makes sense if it's "open data" but not "open source".
And you know what, maybe I am over reacting, because at the end of the day if someone wants to hack on this data they'll just download dolt, then download the data set, then get going -- but after seeing this pattern like 20 times I can't help but be annoyed by it.
[0]: https://planet.openstreetmap.org/
[1]: https://healthcare.ascension.org/price-transparency/price-tr...
[2]: https://github.com/dolthub/dolt#dolt
I’ve been following the progress of Dolt [1] which is a SQL database that works like git. This would give you modification history in a similar way to git. That’s different from recording when events happened, though (and changing your mind about when they happened), so you’ll still need timestamps for that.
[1] https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
In You might as well timestamp itI've been very curious to explore this type of use case with askgit (https://github.com/augmentable-dev/askgit) which was designed for running simple "slice and dice" queries and aggregations on git history (and change stats) for basic analytical purposes. I've been curious about how this could be applied to a small text+git based "db". Say, for a regular json or CSV dumps.
This also reminds me of Dolt: https://github.com/dolthub/dolt which I believe has been on HN a couple times
In Git as a NoSql Database (2016)That's Dolt. https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
In Git as a NoSql Database (2016)Or for a SQL database with Git versioning semantics:
https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
In Git as a NoSql Database (2016)Dolt is Git for Data: a SQL database that you can fork, clone, branch, merge
752 points · Open discussionI think this is an excellent architecture for powerful, respectful, hosted applications. I’ve been thinking about a few extensions of this idea:
First, use advances in privacy technology to create a service-wide data warehouse that has enough information to help you make good decisions without exposing any specific user’s data. Done properly, users will benefit from your improved decision-making without giving up their personal data. Differential Privacy can do this.
Second, give users the opportunity to download their own little database in native format (e.g. SQLite) This is the ultimate in data portability. I think Dolt [0] might be good for this, because its git-like approach gives you push/pull syncing as well as diffing. That would make it easy for users to keep a local copy of the data up to date.
Third, you can start to support se
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lf-hosting and perhaps even open-source the primary user-facing application. The hosted service sells convenience and features enabled by the privacy-respecting data warehouse.
The big questions, of course, are many:
- Would users pay for this?
- Does increased development cost and reduced velocity outweigh the privacy benefits?
- Would the open-source component enable clones that undermine your business, or attract new users who may eventually upgrade to your paid service?
I would like to find out the answers!
[0] https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
People that are interested in a similar feature set should check out https://github.com/attic-labs/noms and the SQL fork of Noms, https://github.com/dolthub/dolt
In CondensationDB: A general-purpose distributed database with end-to-end security> HTML/React inspired UI library that works on all platforms, so we can do electron without wasting 99% of my CPU cycles.
There are React Native forks for Windows, MacOS and Linux. I have no idea whether any of them is "good implementation" though.
> SQL + realtime computed views (eg materialize)
ClickHouse (OLAP DB) has materialized views (but only for inserts). Also Oracle and (I guess!) Materialize DB should have it too.
> Desktop apps that can be run without needing to be installed. (Like websites, but with native code.)
AppImage (and maybe Snap and Flatpak) is like this. Also technically, with Nix you can just run something like
nix-shell -p chromium --command chromium
(without root), but it feels like cheating.
> Git but for data
https://github.com/dolthub/dolt (again, never tried it yet, but would like in future)
In The Great Software Stagnation