Convex on-prem or interacting with data not stored in Convex
Hello, The way I see it, the value of convex is in the computational/transactional "layer". Meaning the stored data could be hosted at the client's premisses. Most companies I worked with would never allow for their data not to be under their tight control. Maybe it'd be possible for such companies to use Convex if they host the data themselves. 99% of the interaction with that data needs to go through convex but they should still be able to host, access and query that data on their own.
For instance, company X ecomerce website/webapp uses Convex but convex itself would use company X's data center for the data storage. Obviously the stored data needs to be usable without the need for Convex. Exp: if they want to part with Convex or if they want to run some special analytics or whatever. Bottom line, company X wants to be the sole and unique holder of that data and all Convex would see is in its intermediary (maybe even ephemeral) layer!
Is such scenario possible now or in the future?
6 Replies
Convex works best when the data is stored in Convex: as soon as the data lives somewhere else, important features of the product like consistency and low subscription update latency can't be provided.
It's not that it isn't possible to hook up, and these problems aren't unsolvable! There's still value in being able to provide some of Convex's properties for data that exists in another database! So there's a lot of thinking about them happening. But storing the data (or at least a copy of the data) really is important to be able to provide the experience to frontend developers we expect of Convex, at least for now.
Re: special analytics and data takeout, absolutely! We provide data export and are aware of the need to get event or snapshot data into analytics systems.
Re: companies needing to store data on-prem: for clients not able to use hosted cloud services like AWS for their databases, Convex will be a hard sell! We take data privacy and integrity very seriously (the founders have extensive experience with this from Dropbox) but in the end if a client isn't able to use cloud services, Convex isn't a good fit.
Thank you much for the extensive reply
Sorry I just re-read the last message. Would this mean that companies managing their own data could make use of Vortex as long as the used DBs live in the cloud? What options are (or would/could be) available? AWS, Azure, GCP ...?🤔
Oh sorry, I just meant that Convex is in the cloud, so if a company requires everything to be on-prem then Convex doesn't fit with that. Regarding potential (currently unplanned,) integrations, anything is possible! But currently Convex does not integrate like this with any databases.
So after viewing this thread, I was wondering-- so does Convex store the data in its own servers or in some external provider (GCP or AWS)?
Quoting Tom >> " Convex is in the cloud"
@ansa Convex stores its data on AWS
convex currently intends to pursue a pretty similar hosting model to Snowflake, where we utilize the cloud (AWS, in our case right now) but manage all the infrastructure for our customers