datahike

Datahike is a durable Datalog database powered by an efficient Datalog query engine. This project started as a port of DataScript to the hitchhiker-tree. All DataScript tests are passing, but we are still working on the internals. Having said this we consider Datahike usable for medium sized projects, since DataScript is very mature and deployed in many applications and the hitchhiker-tree implementation is heavily tested through generative testing. We are building on the two projects and the storage backends for the hitchhiker-tree through konserve. We would like to hear experience reports and are happy if you join us.

You can find API documentation on cljdoc and articles on Datahike on our company's blog page.

We presented Datahike also at meetups,for example at:

• 2021 Bay Area Clojure meetup
• 2019 scicloj online meetup.
• 2019 Vancouver Meetup.
• 2018 Dutch clojure meetup.

Usage

Add to your dependencies:

We provide a small stable API for the JVM at the moment, but the on-disk schema is not fixed yet. We will provide a migration guide until we have reached a stable on-disk schema. Take a look at the ChangeLog before upgrading.

(require '[datahike.api :as d])


;; use the filesystem as storage medium
(def cfg {:store {:backend :file :path "/tmp/example"}})

;; create a database at this place, per default configuration we enforce a strict
;; schema and keep all historical data
(d/create-database cfg)

(def conn (d/connect cfg))

;; the first transaction will be the schema we are using
;; you may also add this within database creation by adding :initial-tx
;; to the configuration
(d/transact conn [{:db/ident :name
                   :db/valueType :db.type/string
                   :db/cardinality :db.cardinality/one }
                  {:db/ident :age
                   :db/valueType :db.type/long
                   :db/cardinality :db.cardinality/one }])

;; lets add some data and wait for the transaction
(d/transact conn [{:name  "Alice", :age   20 }
                  {:name  "Bob", :age   30 }
                  {:name  "Charlie", :age   40 }
                  {:age 15 }])

;; search the data
(d/q '[:find ?e ?n ?a
       :where
       [?e :name ?n]
       [?e :age ?a]]
  @conn)
;; => #{[3 "Alice" 20] [4 "Bob" 30] [5 "Charlie" 40]}

;; add new entity data using a hash map
(d/transact conn {:tx-data [{:db/id 3 :age 25}]})

;; if you want to work with queries like in
;; https://grishaev.me/en/datomic-query/,
;; you may use a hashmap
(d/q {:query '{:find [?e ?n ?a ]
               :where [[?e :name ?n]
                       [?e :age ?a]]}
      :args [@conn]})
;; => #{[5 "Charlie" 40] [4 "Bob" 30] [3 "Alice" 25]}

;; query the history of the data
(d/q '[:find ?a
       :where
       [?e :name "Alice"]
       [?e :age ?a]]
  (d/history @conn))
;; => #{[20] [25]}

;; you might need to release the connection for specific stores
(d/release conn)

;; clean up the database if it is not need any more
(d/delete-database cfg)

The API namespace provides compatibility to a subset of Datomic functionality and should work as a drop-in replacement on the JVM. The rest of Datahike will be ported to core.async to coordinate IO in a platform-neutral manner.

Refer to the docs for more information:

• backend development
• benchmarking
• garbage collection
• contributing to Datahike
• configuration
• differences to Datomic
• entity spec
• logging and error handling
• schema flexibility
• time variance
• versioning

For simple examples have a look at the projects in the examples folder.

Example Projects

• Invoice creation demonstrated at the Dutch Clojure Meetup.

Relationship to Datomic and DataScript

Datahike provides similar functionality to Datomic and can be used as a drop-in replacement for a subset of it. The goal of Datahike is not to provide an open-source reimplementation of Datomic, but it is part of the replikativ toolbox aimed to build distributed data management solutions. We have spoken to many backend engineers and Clojure developers, who tried to stay away from Datomic just because of its proprietary nature and we think in this regard Datahike should make an approach to Datomic easier and vice-versa people who only want to use the goodness of Datalog in small scale applications should not worry about setting up and depending on Datomic.

Some differences are:

• Datahike runs locally on one peer. A transactor might be provided in the future and can also be realized through any linearizing write mechanism, e.g. Apache Kafka. If you are interested, please contact us.
• Datahike provides the database as a transparent value, i.e. you can directly access the index datastructures (hitchhiker-tree) and leverage their persistent nature for replication. These internals are not guaranteed to stay stable, but provide useful insight into what is going on and can be optimized.
• Datahike supports GDPR compliance by allowing to completely remove database entries.
• Datomic has a REST interface and a Java API
• Datomic provides timeouts

Datomic is a full-fledged scalable database (as a service) built from the authors of Clojure and people with a lot of experience. If you need this kind of professional support, you should definitely stick to Datomic.

Datahike's query engine and most of its codebase come from DataScript. Without the work on DataScript, Datahike would not have been possible. Differences to Datomic with respect to the query engine are documented there.

When to Choose Datahike vs. Datomic vs. DataScript

Datahike

Pick Datahike if your app has modest requirements towards a typical durable database, e.g. a single machine and a few millions of entities at maximum. Similarly, if you want to have an open-source solution and be able to study and tinker with the codebase of your database, Datahike provides a comparatively small and well composed codebase to tweak it to your needs. You should also always be able to migrate to Datomic later easily.

Datomic

Pick Datomic if you already know that you will need scalability later or if you need a network API for your database. There is also plenty of material about Datomic online already. Most of it applies in some form or another to Datahike, but it might be easier to use Datomic directly when you first learn Datalog.

DataScript

Pick DataScript if you want the fastest possible query performance and do not have a huge amount of data. You can easily persist the write operations separately and use the fast in-memory index data structure of DataScript then. Datahike also at the moment does not support ClojureScript anymore, although we plan to recover this functionality.

ClojureScript Support

ClojureScript support is planned and work in progress. Please see Discussions.

Migration & Backup

The database can be exported to a flat file with:

(require '[datahike.migrate :refer [export-db import-db]])
(export-db conn "/tmp/eavt-dump")

You must do so before upgrading to a Datahike version that has changed the on-disk format. This can happen as long as we are arriving at version 1.0.0 and will always be communicated through the Changelog. After you have bumped the Datahike version you can use

;; ... setup new-conn (recreate with correct schema)

(import-db new-conn "/tmp/eavt-dump")

to reimport your data into the new format.

The datoms are stored in the CBOR format, enabling migration of binary data, such as the byte array data type now supported by Datahike. You can also use the export as a backup.

If you are upgrading from pre 0.1.2 where we have not had the migration code yet, then just evaluate the datahike.migrate namespace manually in your project before exporting.

Have a look at the change log for recent updates.

Roadmap and Participation

Instead of providing a static roadmap, we have moved to working closely with the community to decide what will be worked on next in a dynamic and interactive way.

How it works?

Go to Discussions and upvote all the ideas of features you would like to be added to Datahike. As soon as we have someone free to work on a new feature, we will address one with the most upvotes.

Of course, you can also propose ideas yourself - either by adding them to the Discussions or even by creating a pull request yourself. Please note thought that due to considerations about incompatibilities to earlier Datahike versions it might sometimes take a bit more time until your PR is integrated.

Commercial Support

We are happy to provide commercial support with lambdaforge. If you are interested in a particular feature, please let us know.

License

Copyright © 2014–2023 Konrad Kühne, Christian Weilbach, Chrislain Razafimahefa, Timo Kramer, Judith Massa, Nikita Prokopov, Ryan Sundberg

Licensed under Eclipse Public License (see LICENSE).