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: JabRef/jabref#9787 (comment). 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 JabRef/jabref#8485

[ryan-carpenter]

The JabRef documentation no longer mentions Elephant SQL.