January 2022 Summaries

Yury Selivanov shares his experience of building EdgeDB, a new database system, over ten years. The journey began with the development of Caos, an ORM that eventually evolved into a full-fledged database server. Along the way, they contributed to open-source projects such as uvloop and asyncpg, helped introduce async/await into Python language, and grew to a 10-person open-source company. The first stable version of EdgeDB is set to release on February 10th, with an accompanying livestreamed "nanoconference" to answer questions about the new database system.

EdgeDB's journey from inception to its upcoming 1.0 release has been a long and transformative process, involving significant contributions to the Python language and the development of innovative tools such as uvloop and asyncpg. Initially conceived as Caos, a "super ORM," EdgeDB evolved from a Python framework into a full-fledged graph-relational database with its own query language, EdgeQL, and a host of other features that distinguish it from traditional ORMs. The development process included contributions to Python's async/await features and the creation of a high-performance event loop and Postgres driver, setting the foundation for EdgeDB's asynchronous core. Throughout its development, EdgeDB has focused on providing a superior developer experience with a robust type system, schema declaration language, and enhanced workflows. The company's commitment to innovation is reflected in its continuous improvement of CLI tools, client libraries, and documentation, making EdgeDB not just a database but a comprehensive platform for modern data management. The release of EdgeDB 1.0, accompanied by a dedicated event, marks a significant milestone in its evolution, promising to offer a new way forward for database interactions.

The fourth and final release candidate of EdgeDB, codenamed Procyon, is now available with no significant changes expected before the 1.0 release. Windows support for CLI has been reintroduced using WSL. Upgrading from previous versions requires a manual dump/restore process or running edgedb cli upgrade and instance upgrade commands. The first stable release will launch on February 10th, 2022, with a live event at lu.ma/edgedb.

EdgeDB's fourth and final release candidate, Procyon, has been released with minimal changes, primarily focusing on bug fixes and a non-breaking simplification to the for loop syntax, as the team prepares for the EdgeDB 1.0 launch on February 10th, 2022, during a livestreamed event. The release reintroduces Windows support for the CLI by using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) instead of Docker, ensuring that all documented workflows function seamlessly. New users are encouraged to follow a 10-minute Quickstart guide for installation and initial setup, while those upgrading from earlier versions must follow specific procedures, including manual dump/restore for versions RC2 or earlier and straightforward CLI commands for RC3. The upcoming launch is positioned as a significant milestone, heralding the post-SQL era, and interested parties can register for the live event at lu.ma/edgedb. For those new to EdgeDB, various resources such as the interactive tutorial and the Easy EdgeDB e-book are available to provide a comprehensive learning experience.