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p/prisma-dataThe future of serverless databases.
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Jamie Barton

Prisma - Build a GraphQL server with any database

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Prisma is a performant open-source GraphQL ORM-like layer doing the heavy lifting in your GraphQL server. It turns your database into a GraphQL API which can be consumed by your resolvers via GraphQL bindings.

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Johannes Schickling
Maker
Update: We also have some other exciting news to share today – We just announced our $4.5M seed round led by Kleiner Perkins: https://www.prisma.io/blog/prism... ______ Thanks a lot for hunting us, Jamie! 🙏 Hi everyone! 🙌 Today is a pretty big day for us that we've been working towards over the last 6 months. Since the release of Prisma 1.0, we've seen thousands of developers start using Prisma to build their GraphQL servers and have received incredibly positive feedback! As Prisma has become our main focus, we're very excited to officially rebrand to Prisma today including a complete redesign of our website and cloud product. With our mission of building the data layer for modern applications we're always trying to make development simpler & easier – especially in regards to databases. We've recently introduced support for Postgres and are working towards adding support for all major databases. If you haven't tried out Prisma yet, you can get started over here: https://www.prisma.io/docs/quick... Please let us know if you have any questions! 👋
Jamie Barton
Hunter
I've been using the tools by the guys at Prisma for quite some time (as you can probably see by my previous submissions!). Prisma is a huge leap forward for developers who want to build GraphQL servers. Huge congratulations on the launch today!
André König
Can’t emphasize enough how Prisma shortens the overall development time! I’ve rewritten a whole backend platform a couple of weeks ago and it took me just a month to do so. For comparison: the previous iteration (without Prisma) took half a year. It was amazing and most importantly: a fun ride! HUGE ”thank you“ to the team and congratulations on the launch today!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@binarycereals Thanks so much! Looking forward to see what you're building next!
Leonardo Pasta
Anyone know whether this will affect longterm support for Graphcool? It seems like they are attempting to push users towards Prisma.
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@leonardo_pasta Hi Leonardo, thanks for your question! Even though we're changing our name to Prisma, this won't affect your existing Graphcool projects. However, our development focus is definitely shifting towards Prisma right now. A good way to think about it is to use Graphcool when you're focussing on the frontend and just want a super simple GraphQL backend that works out of the box. When build more complex applications where you need full control over your data and business logic, I'd definitely recommend looking into Prisma. It should be pretty easy once you understand how to build a GraphQL server which you can learn over here: https://www.howtographql.com/gra... Please let me know if you have any more questions. Happy to help! 🙌
Leonardo Pasta
@_schickling Thanks for the reply Johannes, very helpful!
Mo
@leonardo_pasta @_schickling Great explaination! Thanks for explaining this, I'm sure more people have had this in mind as well. 🙌
Divyendu Singh
Can vouch for Prisma as the most awesome tool out there to convert your database into a flexible GraphQL API. I have already taken 3 apps to production with Prisma and in development are 2 apps and a telegram bot. Prisma has successfully removed my backend worries. Congratulations to the team on the launch today!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@divyenduz Thanks a lot – that's awesome to hear, Divyendu! 💪
Craig McInroy
I'm most excited about the potential for Prisma to impact the evolution of existing, ageing architectures. Thus, passive connectors for relational database platforms represent a huge opportunity for the product. The recent release of Prisma 1.8 with support for existing Postgres databases is a huge milestone. Congrats to the team on that!! and on today's announcement/launch!! I will be closely following developments in this space, as my current purview involves a Oracle-backed ecosystem. I haven't found much activity in the space where GraphQL and Oracle converge. The possibility for a Prisma passive connector for Oracle is of great interest to me.
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@craigmcinroy Thanks a lot for your great feedback, Craig! I couldn't agree more with you about the opportunity of Prisma in regards to existing/legacy systems in combination with GraphQL. Adding support for more databases is our highest priority right now and will definitely include a connector for Oracle databases. Would be great if you could subscribe to this issue over here: https://github.com/prismagraphql... Please let me know if you have any other questions!
Anders Bech Mellson
As a newcomer to GraphQL I would like to know what would be the benefit of using Prisma + Prisma Cloud with an Amazon RDS database over using Amazon AWS AppSync?
Mo
@mellson Great question! @_schickling would like to have your input here!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@mellson Hey Anders! Great question (and definitely something we'll soon write a blog post about). AppSync is great for small applications with a relatively simple data model. But as soon as you start building a more complex app you will find it limiting. Where AppSync limits you to a single level of resolvers configured with their Velocity language, Prisma gives you full flexibility to model your application schema using GraphQL SDL. So the quick answer is that Prisma is much more pleasant to work with and much more flexible than AppSync. Another important aspect is that AppSync only works with AWS services. This means that if you ever want to move one or more of your services to for example Digital Ocean or use a new database that is a better fit for your need, you are out of luck. This is in contrast to Prisma that is open source, can run in any environment and has a plan to support all the most popular databases: https://www.prisma.io/features/d.... This also means that you can run Prisma locally during development instead of having to rely on a stable connection to AWS. This recent post might help you get a better understanding of the difference between Prisma and AppSync: https://medium.com/@brandonmp/wh... Does this make it more clear for you? Happy to elaborate further! What kind of application/system are you going to build?
Anders Bech Mellson
@_schickling thank you for the reply! I look forward to learning more about GraphQL and Prisma. Right now I'm building a small questionnaire type application. And I need to have offline support so I think I will use AppSync for this (for now). And yes thank you, it clarified somewhat. I think my main confusion is around how Prisma Cloud fits with the other products. I am uncertain as to what you can and can't do with Cloud compared to hosting your own Prisma instance. I will keep following along and hopefully get a chance to try out your products soon! Congrats on the big events these days 🎉
Ben Awad
I love using Prisma, it allows you to build a GraphQL server really fast and it works super well with Typescript! Also PostgreSQL support just came out which I'm super excited for :) If you want to learn more I made a series using it with React Native: https://www.youtube.com/playlist...
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@benawad97 Hi Ben! Thanks so much for your support! Always super excited to see your tutorial videos on Youtube! Would be awesome to see some tutorials soon on how to migrate to Prisma with an existing Postgres database! 🎉
Gauthier Rodaro
Kudos to the Prisma Team! This is an amazing open source project and it moves really fast. They ship features like crazy and the support/communication is really good. I have been using it for 2 personal projects and I was so impressed with Prisma that I am now introducing it to my colleagues! Congratulations to the team on the launch!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@gauthier_rodaro Hi Gauthier! Thanks a lot for your great feedback! Glad to hear Prisma helped you for your 2 projects! Please let us know if you need any help when introducing Prisma at work! 💪
Huvik

We are using Prisma in production and we are supper happy with it. Prisma offers great flexibility in creating rich APIs. We have prisma 3 months in production and had no problems at all.

Prisma is backed by great team and provides a lot of sources in bleeding edge technology world.

Pros:

Easy to use, flexible, rock solid, offers great developer tools, good support

Cons:

I couldn't find any

Radoslav Stankov
I like how with Prism you can define a model schema and have GraphQL API. It is great for rapid development. Also, the team behind are amazing community leaders in the GraphQL community 😀 Good luck with your lunch 🚀
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@rstankov Thanks a lot, Radoslav! Btw, Prisma now also supports existing databases such as Postgres and is designed for high-scale production workloads. That means Prisma gives you the best of both worlds: rapid development + production-ready setup. Here is some more information about Prisma's query engine: https://www.prisma.io/features/q... Looking forward to seeing you at GraphQL-Europe next month! For everybody else interested in learning more about GraphQL, we'd love to see you in Berlin for the GraphQL Europe conference on June 15th (use the code `prisma15` for 15% off 💌): https://www.graphql-europe.org/
Deam
Congratulations on the launch! The Prisma/Graphcool team has been the lead contributor to open source GraphQL which I appreciate a lot. Projects such as graphql-yoga and graphql-playground makes the development workflow so much easier. All of this in combination with Prisma will help bootstrap projects blazingly fast!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@deamlabs Thanks a lot! Glad your enjoy working with our GraphQL tools. I'm especially excited about GraphQL Playground as we'll have some pretty big new features coming up soon! Looking forward to see what you'll be building! 🙌
Dominik Ferber
Top Product

I never had a database/backend up and running so fast. Especially loving the new architecture which gives full flexibility to the developer regarding authentication of users and authorisation to change/access data. It is also easy to integrate data from other services into the own API, no vendor lock in at all!

I recently reported an issue on a Friday afternoon on GitHub and it was solved within 24 hours, which is just great.

I can really recommend Prisma!

Pros:

Super easy to get started and iterate

Cons:

No backups yet, but they are coming soon

Brandon Bayer
Do you plan to support “offline first” applications? I have an app I want to save all data locally but have it replicated to the server and other devices as the network permits. Currently I think the only good options for this functionality is AWS AppSync and Realm.io. Awesome job team!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@beedesignllc Hi Brandon! Thanks a lot for your great question! Building "offline first" applications is definitely something we're interested in. We're currently talking to some folks at Apollo on how to make this easier. Would be great if you could share further thoughts over here: https://github.com/prismagraphql...
André Bazaglia
This is a powerful and huge abstraction layer between the application and the database. Definitely a must-have for most GraphQL applications. I've been able to reduce and simplify my code since I've been using Prisma. I just write my types schema and it generates all the inputs and query types, also providing the intermediate GraphQL server that integrates with the database. Amazing to see it here :)
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@bazaglia Hi André! Glad to hear Prisma speeding up your development process! Do you have anything in mind how we could improve things even further? 🙌
Marc Seitz
Prisma is without a doubt the glue that has been missing in the enterprise technology stack. We’ve been working with the team since before they official opened doors as Graphcool and I’m happy to see them succeed with Prisma. - 4 active projects in production with Prisma (2x native iOS, 2x Web) and 2 project in development at the moment
Petr Bela

I have followed the team pretty much since they launched the beta of Graphcool more than two years ago. Since then I've watched them iterate on the product, rewrite it, write a ton of open-source libraries, and rewrite it again to deliver the best tool to build your own GraphQL server.

The GraphQL community today stands on three pillars: Apollo, Prisma, and Facebook itself. It's amazing to see these guys evolve the product and take the company to the next stage.

Pros:

Awesome team that's heavily involved in open-source and pushing GraphQL forward.

Cons:

I liked the cool Graphcool name.

Daler Karimov
Very excited to see new DBs and reliable migrations and backups in near future! Kudos team!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@dalerka Thanks a lot, Daler! We're indeed working on more DB connectors and an improved migration system including backups. Stay tuned! :)
emil møller

Graphcool really makes graphQL a reality! As a frontend developer i'd wish that i'd never had to use REST again! GraphQL is awesome, and I believe that Prisma can help me get the full team on board, and we'll be able to scale and make better apps and sites!

Pros:

Best team behind this fantastic product!

Cons:

None, these guys are the best, and i've used all their former products with no regrets!

Alex Banks
Prisma is one of the best things to happen in tech this year. We've found that it allows us to focus on designing schemas and building resolvers, the fun stuff, actual GraphQL. Prisma handles the rest of the stuff that stands in the way of migrating to GraphQL. I highly recommend checking it out!
Johannes Schickling
Maker
@moontahoe Thanks a lot for the great feedback, Alex! I'm very excited to hear Prisma is making your migration to GraphQL easier! Would be fantastic to see a blog post about this. Would you be interested in writing something up?