December 2022 Summaries

PostgREST 11 introduces improved querying capabilities, including spreading related tables, related orders, and anti-joins. Spreading related tables allows for a "flattened" result to be presented to the frontend without nested objects. Order by related tables enables ordering of a table based on a related table column. Anti-joins allow filtering rows where the related table is null or not null, providing more flexibility in combining related tables' conditions. These features are currently available as a pre-release and can be tried out locally with the Supabase CLI.

Supabase has introduced custom domains and vanity subdomains to help users present a more polished product. Custom Domains allow users to use their own domain for their Supabase project, while Vanity Subdomains enable them to choose a relevant subdomain on Supabase's domain. These features are now generally available as paid add-ons through the Supabase dashboard and closed beta, respectively. However, there are some limitations such as Edge Functions not supporting custom domains or vanity subdomains yet, and only one custom domain or vanity subdomain per project being allowed currently.

Supabase, a collaborative company, has been working with and sponsoring various open source tools. They have recently added new integrations such as FlutterFlow, OneSignal, and NextAuth to their roster. Additionally, they have made improvements in the Postgres ecosystem by adding PGroonga Multilingual Search extension and supporting PostgreSQL 15. Supabase has also been featured in several applications and projects, including LottieFiles, Mobbin, sound.xyz, Topaz, Repeat.dev, Dots, and Fleeting Notes. The company is dedicated to giving back to the open source community by investing in tools like OrioleDB and employing maintainers of external tools they use. They also plan to continue their collaborative approach with other companies working on exciting ideas in the database ecosystem.

The PostgreSQL extension `pg_graphql` has reached version 1.0 and is now generally available, providing a GraphQL interface to interact with the database. The extension was created to meet the constraints of Supabase Free Plan projects, which have limited memory resources. It uses an architecture that leverages Postgres primitives, resulting in synergies such as security being handled by standard SQL role permissions and Row Level Security policies, and performance scaling directly with the size of the database. The implementation has been refined from a pure SQL approach to one using Rust's zero-cost abstractions, significantly improving development velocity, code quality, and performance. With this release, pg_graphql supports various features such as always-up-to-date schema inspection, ACID guarantees, and scalability, making it suitable for a wide range of use cases. The roadmap includes further feature expansions, including support for views, filtering options, user-defined functions, and more.

When we announced Point-in-Time a few months ago, it was only available for Enterprise customers. Today, we're making PITR available for more projects, with a new Dashboard UI that makes it simple to use. Pro Plan projects created from August 2022 onwards can now enable Point In Time Recovery (PITR) from the dashboard, and older projects will be made available in the future. PITR provides the ability to restore a database to any specified point in time, useful for averting disasters or recovering from data loss. The feature uses a combination of physical backups and archives from the Write Ahead Log (WAL) to achieve this. When deciding whether to enable PITR, consider your Recovery Point Objective (RPO), which is the threshold for how much data a business can lose in case of disaster. Enabling PITR allows for shorter RPOs by backing up WAL files at two-minute intervals, and retention periods can be increased via self-serve. The new Dashboard UI makes it simple to use PITR, and older projects will be made available in the future.

The PostgreSQL community has released version 15 (stable) with several new features, including a more secure permission model, improved performance for sorting and window functions, and support for the MERGE operation. Other notable additions include enhanced logical replication capabilities, increased parallelization, JSON logging, compressing options, and new POSIX regular expression functions. The upgrade to PostgreSQL 15 is recommended due to the numerous bug fixes and stability improvements it brings, and is considered safe thanks to a half-year stabilization period between major version releases.

Supabase has released several updates during Launch Week Day 6, including new documentation built with Next.js, improved storage features such as image resizing and a Smart CDN, multi-factor authentication, and foreign data wrappers for Postgres. The company also introduced Vault for encrypted secrets and encryption in Postgres, pg_graphql v1 for GraphQL support in Postgres, Point-in-Time Recovery, custom domains, and PostgreSQL 15 support. Additionally, Supabase has partnered with companies like Flutterflow and OneSignal to offer new tools for app development and push notifications. These updates aim to improve the overall developer experience and provide more features for building secure and scalable applications.

Supabase has released its "Vault" feature, a new Postgres extension and accompanying UI that makes it safe and easy to store encrypted secrets and encrypt other stored data in your database. The Vault is built on top of Transparent Column Encryption (TCE) and provides features such as secrets management, encryption keys, and transparent column encryption. It allows developers to store sensitive data like environment variables, API keys, and user data securely, while also providing row-level authenticated encryption. The feature uses pgsodium's TCE algorithm to encrypt data in an authenticated form, with key IDs stored outside of the database for added security. With Vault, Supabase aims to make privacy a simple feature for modern products, with possibilities such as end-to-end encryption, group encryption, and public key management. The feature is now available on all Supabase projects, with documentation and guides provided for users to learn how to use it.

Supabase Wrappers is a framework for building Postgres Foreign Data Wrappers (FDWs) that connects Postgres to external systems, enabling various possibilities such as on-demand Big Data, simplified onboarding, and simplified development. The framework supports multiple external systems, including Firebase, Stripe, Clickhouse, BigQuery, Snowflake, Oracle, S3, Airtable, and more, allowing developers to query remote data directly from their Postgres database using SQL. With Wrappers, developers can offload large datasets from their Postgres database to Data Warehouses, reducing reliance on data engineering infrastructure and enabling faster access to operational insights. The framework provides a common interface to the world, transforming any API into a dataset with a common interface, making it easier for developers to reason about data. Wrappers is built using Rust and supports async development, push down functionality, and various data types, allowing for secure and efficient querying of remote data sources.

Today, Supabase introduces Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) for all users. MFA adds an extra layer of security by verifying user identity through additional steps such as password and authenticator application. The feature is built in response to customer requests for enhanced security compliance or peace of mind. Supabase also supports Single Sign On (SSO) on the dashboard, which can be enabled on Enterprise plans upon request.

Supabase Storage introduces three new features: Image resizing, webhooks, and a Smart CDN. These features work together to deliver an advanced image resizing system. The image resizing feature uses imgproxy for on-demand image resizing with easy integration using just a few lines of code. The Smart CDN offers smarter cache invalidation whenever there are changes, ensuring that users always see the most recent images. Webhooks and rate-limiting have also been added to the Storage API. Image Resizing is currently in Beta and available for Pro Plan and Enterprise customers.

The author of this text, a developer at Supabase, shares the challenges they faced with their documentation tool, which was previously powered by Docusaurus. The main issue was that the tool's complexity and lack of integration with other parts of the platform made it difficult to contribute to and maintain. To address this, the team decided to migrate to Next.js, a unified frontend stack, and built an MVP (minimum viable product) documentation site. This new release adds several features, including a new design, better navigation, and improved reference docs. The author hopes to build on this foundation by re-imaging what a documentation experience can be, with plans for fully integrated experiences, auto-generated documentation, and interactive tutorials.

pg_crdt, an experimental extension for CRDTs, has been open-sourced by Supabase, aiming to provide offline-sync/support capabilities. CRDTs (Conflict-free Replicated Data Types) are a type of data structure designed to solve the problem of merging changes in a collaborative app without needing a central authority. The extension adds CRDT support to Postgres as a data type, allowing developers to build collaborative apps with offline capabilities. It supports Yjs and Automerge libraries, which have robust JavaScript implementations, making it suitable for client-side development. However, there are limitations to the approach, including broadcasting database changes from the Postgres write ahead log, generating significant serialization/deserialization overhead on-update, and frequently updated CRDTs producing a lot of WAL and dead tuples. Supabase is open to feedback and suggestions through the GitHub repo's Discussions feature.

Supabase has experienced significant growth in the past year, increasing its databases deployed by 3.5x and revenue by 1300%. The company attributes this success to its relentless team and intense shipping schedule. Key traits that have shaped the culture at Supabase include working effectively asynchronously, an egoless attitude, a Kaizen mindset, defaulting to action, unreasonable levels of ambition, and a founder mindset. The company's structure is designed to support these values, with independent teams responsible for different aspects of the product stack. A 3-month product cycle allows for more ambitious goal setting and accommodates varying team dynamics.

The official Supabase Hackathon is scheduled to take place from December 9th to December 19th, with a focus on building new Open Source projects using Supabase. Participants have 10 days to create their project, which can be any type of project, app, tool, library, or anything. The hackathon offers several prizes, including $1500 in GitHub sponsorships and an official Supabase Keyboard for the winning team, as well as swag kits for the most fun/interesting, best Flutter project, and best storage project. The hackathon will be judged by both Supabase and Deno teams, with a focus on creativity, functionality, and use of Supabase features. Teams can submit their projects using a specific form, and the event will feature live building by the Supabase team in their Discord channel.

Launch Week 6 is just around the corner, bringing 5 days of shipping with major community-requested features. The event will feature Remix Auth Helpers, making server-side auth easier and more efficient, as well as a new YouTube series on Edgy Edge Functions. Additionally, there have been several product updates, including fixes for issues with the `supabase.auth.signOut` function and support for Conda installation. The community has also created content in various formats, such as videos and tutorials, showcasing projects built with Supabase. These include a new course by Fireship on building a Reddit-inspired web app from scratch, as well as other guides, tutorials, and articles covering topics like authentication, serverless functions, and more.

Supabase launched a Content Storm initiative during their Launch Week 6 event, which involved over 30 external content creators producing Supabase-related content on the same day. The campaign aimed to promote Supabase and provide an opportunity for participants to build their personal brands or promote their products and startups. Contributions included tutorials, live streams, case studies, and more, covering various formats and programming languages.