ElephantSQL end of life announcement

[ryan-carpenter]

JabRef documentation recommends ElephantSQL, which has announced end of life on January 27, 2025 https://www.elephantsql.com/blog/end-of-life-announcement.html Documentation to update: https://docs.jabref.org/collaborative-work/sqldatabase

[koppor]

What is the alternative we could recommend?

[ryan-carpenter]

What is the alternative we could recommend?

I don't have an opinion on this, but Reddit users do. Some of them suggest these as ElephantSQL alternatives:

• https://tembo.io/ (https://github.com/tembo-io/tembo)
• https://supabase.com (https://github.com/supabase/supabase)
• https://neon.tech (https://github.com/neondatabase/neon)
• https://mkdb.sh (https://github.com/antoniosarosi/mkdb)

Some performance data: https://pilcrow.vercel.app/blog/serverless-database-latency

Open-source with a free tier, and easy to use would be ideal. People with database admin expertise probably don't need a recommendation.

[koppor]

What is the alternative we could recommend?

I don't have an opinion on this, but Reddit users do.

:-)

Some performance data: pilcrow.vercel.app/blog/serverless-database-latency

Nice.

Open-source with a free tier, and easy to use would be ideal.

Then just the first one? Or should we list all? -- The aim is for impatient developers (and users!!) not wanting to do tedious research, but just trying out things quickly.

People with database admin expertise probably don't need a recommendation.

Sure. The hint was for developers not wanting to fire up a PostgresDB.

[ryan-carpenter]

Then just the first one? Or should we list all? -- The aim is for ... trying out things quickly.

I suppose it depends on a successful trial and perhaps the database location. I agree that Tembo's landing page matches the "brief" very well. Other than specific suggestions, the most helpful information is the right keyword -- "serverless database" or "serverless postgres".

At minimum, the documentation could say something like:

You don't have to learn database administration to use JabRef with SQL. To get started quickly, just connect JabRef to a "serverless" database host [such as ... ]. Jabref also works with traditional managed and self-hosted databases.

[ryan-carpenter]

The Nile, cockroachdb, and Amazon Aurora also come up as potential options.

[ryan-carpenter]

Successfully connected to Supabase ~with a tremendous lag and intermittent connection. However, there was a banner displaying on Supabase describing a service disruption of some sort that was under investigation.~ Free projects are deleted after one week of inactivity.

Connection settings are provided in the database configuration screen under Project Settings (gear icon, bottom left corner; not shown in the screenshot).

[ryan-carpenter]

Successfully connected to a database on Tembo (free tier). Setup was simple but did not provide a choice of location. Account creation asked for personal information and the privacy policy was permissive. ~Performance was too poor to work with with an empty JabRef library, and I had to terminate JabRef when it became unresponsive (same as supabase).~ This was not the case when I tried ElephantSQL some time ago. It was too slow with a distant server, but good enough with a close server to explore using JabRef with a back end. Maybe a one-click postgresql installer or even a managed database from one of the usual hosting services would be easer to recommend. These serverless providers are clearly targeting bigger customers than hobbyists.

[ryan-carpenter]

The performance issues I had with remote databases were due to a bug. I had to disable time stamps for modified entries, discussed here: https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/9787#issuecomment-1519877710. I have only verified this with a paid account on another host, where I had the same issue as the test databases on supabase and tembo. See also https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/issues/8485