prisma1 VS MikroORM

I was surprised to see Prisma (a js library) listed, digging more I found out that they indeed had an Scala project which is now archived https://github.com/prisma/prisma1

For more: https://github.com/prisma/prisma1/issues/3830

Hey there, I'm Nikolas from the Prisma team. Just came here to quickly clarify this notion:

> Prisma is an API server that puts a GraphQL API in front of a DB.

Prisma is an ORM which generates a JavaScript/TypeScript client library for your database.

Your description is very true for Prisma 1 (which has been in maintenance mode for several years and is officially deprecated by now [1]), but the latest version(s) of Prisma (v2+) don't expose a GraphQL API any more. Prisma 1 also used GraphQL SDL for data modeling, the Prisma ORM on the other hand has its own, custom modeling language for describing database schemas in a declarative way and also comes with a flexible migration system.

That being said (and as Jens also mentioned elsewhere), the Prisma ORM does use GraphQL _internally_ as a wire protocol. However, as a developer, you _never_ touch this internal GraphQL layer and are not even supposed to be aware of it (you actually have to jump through a lot of hoops to even "find" it). It's also very likely that we'll replace GraphQL as a wire protocol in the future, so "GraphQL" really isn't something you should be thinking about as a developer who is using Prisma.

Hope that clarifies the situation a bit, let me know if you have any further questions around this topic.

[1] https://github.com/prisma/prisma1/issues/5208

Could you clarify this? Are you referring to the old Prisma 1 Cloud or the new Prisma Data Platform?

First released in 2019, Prisma is the newest ORM of the four we discussed. It will need time to get to a more mature state. Recently, the release of version 3 introduced a few breaking changes. There are also some existing issues noted in GitHub, such as that it does not support some Postgres column types.

Mongoose is quite a standard also open-source, but Prisma is an emerging modern solution that seems to take the cake.

Well, here comes Blitz, the agnostic monolith. Take the database, for example - Blitz comes out-of-the-box with Prisma 2. However, you're free to switch to another one like Fauna or DynamoDB. The same goes for the configuration; deciding a folder structure, defining routing conventions, selecting a styling library, and adding authorization and authentication are all set up by default, but that doesn't mean you cannot go your own way.

There is also a RealWorld port (Rakkas implementation of the RealWorld specification), a simple but complete fullstack application demonstrating how to approach building a REST API, accessing your database (via Prisma), handling authentication, testing, and more.

If you're into Typescript and prefer a code-first approach when working with databases, you'll be happy to learn about Prisma! Prisma is a next-generation Node.js and TypeScript ORM, that allows you to define a schema using a dedicated DSL so that you can then have all the comforts of modern development environments like intellisense, static type checking, automatic scaffolding and more.

It is a frontend framework, but with API routes and ORMs like https://www.prisma.io/ , you could use it as a complete stack in traditional sense I suppose.

In my usual NodeJS tech stack, which includes GraphQL, NestJS, SQL (predominantly PostgreSQL with MikroORM), I encountered these limitations. To overcome them, I've developed a new stack utilizing Rust, which still offers some ease of development:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/mikro-orm - 44 issues

Mikro-ORM is a TypeScript ORM that focuses on simplicity and efficiency. It supports various SQL databases and MongoDB. Mikro-ORM is known for its simplicity and developer-friendly APIs. It provides a concise syntax for defining data models and relationships, making it easy to use.

I found MikroORM [0] to be quite reasonable if you're in the TS ecosystem already. It was also easy to do custom, raw queries, and really just felt like it wasn't in the way.

[0] https://mikro-orm.io/

It also does code generation into its own module, so good luck with hoisting in a monorepo where you want multiple independent prisma schemas. MikroORM[1] is a much better alternative to Prisma in my opinion but any ORM carries some form of baggage.

[1] https://mikro-orm.io/

More about v6 development can be found here.

I recommend looking at https://mikro-orm.io/