[mlissner]

OK, this is really neat: - S3 is really cheap static storage for files. - DuckDB is a database that uses S3 for its storage. - WASM lets you run binary (non-JS) code in your browser. - DuckDB-Wasm allows you to run a database in your browser.

Put all of that together, and you get a website that queries S3 with no backend at all. Amazing.

[timeflex]

S3 might be relatively cheap for storing files, but with bandwidth you could easily be paying $230/mo. If you make it public facing & want to try to use their cloud reporting, metrics, etc. to prevent people for running up your bandwidth, your "really cheap" static hosting could easily cost you more than $500/mo.

[theultdev]

R2 is S3 compatible with no egress fees.

Cloudflare actually has built in iceberg support for R2 buckets. It's quite nice.

Combine that with their pipelines it's a simple http request to ingest, then just point duckdb to the iceberg enabled R2 bucket to analyze.

[7952]

I think this approach makes sense for services with a small number of users relative to the data they are searching. That just isn't a good fit for a lot of hosted services. Think how much that TB's of data would cost on Algolia or similar services.

You have to store the data somehow anyway, and you have to retrieve some of it to service a query. If egress costs too much you could always change later to put the browser code on a server. Also it would presumably be possible to quantify the trade-off between processing the data client side and on the server.

[simonw]

Stick it behind Cloudflare and it should be effectively free.

[thadt]

S3 is doing quite a lot of sophisticated lifting to qualify as no backend at all.

But yeah - this is pretty neat. Easily seems like the future of static datasets should wind up in something like this. Just data, with some well chosen indices.

[simonw]

I believe all S3 has to do here is respond to HTTP Range queries, which are supported by almost every static server out there - Apache, Nginx etc should all support the same trick.

[theultdev]

Still qualifies imo. Everything is static and on a CDN.

Lack of server/dynamic code qualifies as no backend.

[codedokode]

Can you replace S3 with a directory and nginx and save lot of money?

[mpweiher]

Yes. Especially if you use Storage Combinators.

They let you easily abstract over storage.

https://2019.splashcon.org/details/splash-2019-Onward-papers...

[dtech]

Yes, i.i.r.c. it's not S3 specific just URLs

[rubenvanwyk]

Or use R2 instead. It’s even easier.