Using PostgreSQL these last few months reminds me of just how much fun it is to work with a relational database. DynamoDB is very capable, but I wouldn’t call it fun. It’s kinda boring, actually. Not that that’s a bad thing: one could argue that “boring” is what you want from a database.

Working with PostgreSQL, on the other hand, has been fun. There’s no better word to describe it. It’s been quite enjoyable designing new tables and writing SQL statements.

Not sure why this is, but I’m guessing it’s got something to do with working with a schema. It exercises the same sort of brain muscles1 as designing data structures or architecting an application. Much more interesting than dealing with a schemaless database, where someone could simply say “ah, just shove this object it a DynamoDB table.”

It’s either that, or just that PostgreSQL has a more powerful query language than what DynamoDB offers. I mean, DynamoDB’s query capabilities need to be pretty restricted, thanks to how it stores it’s data. That’s the price you pay for scale.

  1. My brain muscles couldn’t come up with a better term here. 😄 ↩︎