Is Hasura v3 / DDN OSS?

[mirzap]

New documentation is confusing and is 100% SaaS focused. I can't figure out is Hasura (v3/DDN) still free to self host? If it is, is there any documentation how to do it?

[rakeshkky]

Hi @mirzap, the Hasura DDN API engine is already open-sourced and available in the graphql-engine repo here.

[sfcgeorge]

So graphql-engine V3 and the data connectors are open source, but as I understand it "DDN" is the cloud console GUI "thing" for creating metadata. Is that bit open source? It used to be part of graphql-engine but now looks like it's SaaS only?

Would graphql-engine V3 still run without connecting to cloud DDN? How would one create and import the metadata.json? There used to be metadata API but I can't find it in the docs.

[rakeshkky]

The DDN cloud console UI is a part of Hasura cloud offering and hence, it is not open sourced. AFAIK, one cannot author metadata in cloud console.

You've to use the ddn CLI for authoring metadata. Initialize a project as per instructions provided here and add your resources (data source, models etc.). To create a local build and serve engine locally, please follow the local dev workflow.

Tip: To use locally built v3-engine OSS.

• build a docker image using the Dockerfile
• overwrite the image name under dockerfile_inline in your DDN project's compose.yaml file.
  And run ddn run docker-start and ddn console --local commands.

[rakeshkky]

There used to be metadata API but I can't find it in the docs.

Hasura v3/DDN doesn't have a metadata API.

[mirzap]

I tried running docker-compose in the v3 folder. I get two containers running, but there is no Hasura UI, and I have no idea how to start. I’ve been working with Hasura since v1, and this is quite disappointing.

If I get this right, is there no more UI interface for building tables, APIs, etc?

I’ve long avoided Supabase because I like Hasura; it is a great product. But now I’m considering switching completely. They improve and deliver constantly, while hasura has been stagnating for some time now.

[hgiasac]

If I get this right, is there no more UI interface for building tables, APIs, etc?

@mirzap you are correct. The long-term goal of Hasura v3 is to support many databases. Each database has a different API spec so we no longer take much effort for database migrations. If you only need to connect Hasura with PostgreSQL Hasura v2 is still very good to be used.

I recommend you download the DDN CLI to create the boilerplate and follow the guide in the Hasura v3 docs. The DX of OSS and cloud are the same. If you don't want to deploy the project to the Hasura cloud you can build the metadata locally and run the stack with docker-compose or Kubernetes.

https://hasura.io/docs/3.0/getting-started/quickstart (You can stop at step 7 and browse http://localhost:3000 to run the Graphiql playground)

For metadata development, we maintain the CLI, Language Server Protocol, and VSCode IDE so developers can develop metadata directly in the editor. The downside of web UI development in v2 is that the performance is slow if the metadata is big. The IDE will be more lightweight to run.

Or you can use Hasura v2 as a migration tool to create database migrations and develop metadata in v3. It's a bit tricky but still works well.