Hi, everyone! đ We are FancyQL (or EdgeDB, if you prefer).
97,425 GitHub stars. Oh, sorry. No, thatâs not the number of stars we have. (Maybe someday. đ ) Thatâs the current number of stars across all ORM projects currently on GitHub.
These roughly 97,000 stars reflect a strong desire for a better developer experience by applying a coat of usability paint on top of SQL through the use of an ORM. We know theyâre serious about it, not because they clicked a star icon on GitHub, but because using an ORM comes at a cost. Developers invest time to learn the ORM and sacrifice performance in their applications.
We agreed with the ORM stars that things could be better, but we werenât willing to pay all the ORM costs. We havenât yet figured out a way to build a better database that doesnât require you to learn anything new. But the new things youâre learning represent the improvements you wanted in the first place, so that cost feels justified. EdgeDB was born out of a question: do we really have to pay the performance cost of an ORM just to have a better developer experience?
In asking that question, hypothesizing the answer would be âno,â and trying to prove our hypothesis, we built EdgeDB. Turns out, you donât need to reach for an ORM and sacrifice performance to get a great developer experience.
Weâre not going to be for everyone, but weâve built a general purpose relational database that could be for anyone. We might be for you if you hate writing joins or if you enjoy type safety or if you like having great docs and support⊠or if youâve ever starred an ORM! EdgeDB is for those stars, and the thousands of people who voted with their clicks that, although SQL is ubiquitous and incredibly enduring, it ainât perfect.
If you love SQL, though, youâre in luck. Weâre not trying to put SQL out of business (whatever that would even mean). Instead, weâre here to provide an alternative for developers who are frustrated with SQL. For developers who donât like the context switching. For developers who want usability, but donât want to pay the ORM performance tax. For developers who want more leverage and will take whatever advantages they can to get there.
You might say that, in attempting to build a better alternative to SQL for developers, EdgeDB is shooting for the stars. And those 97,000+ are exactly the stars weâre shooting for.