Technical Overview | Use Case: Decentralization | FAQ | Command-Line Interface | Go SDK | Path Syntax
Noms is a decentralized database philosophically descendant from the Git version control system.
Like Git, Noms is:
- Versioned: By default, all previous versions of the database are retained. You can trivially track how the database evolved to its current state, easily and efficiently compare any two versions, or even rewind and branch from any previous version.
- Synchronizable: Instances of a single Noms database can be disconnected from each other for any amount of time, then later reconcile their changes efficiently and correctly.
Unlike Git, Noms is a database, so it also:
- Primarily stores structured data, not files and directories (see: the Noms type system)
- Scales well to large amounts of data and concurrent clients (TODO: benchmarks)
- Supports atomic transactions (a single instance of Noms is CP, but Noms is typically run in production backed by S3, in which case it is "effectively CA")
- Supports efficient indexes (see: Noms prolly-trees)
- Features a flexible query model (see: GraphQL)
Finally, because Noms is content-addressed, it yields a very pleasant programming model.
Working with Noms is declarative. You don't INSERT new data, UPDATE existing data, or DELETE old data. You simply declare what the data ought to be right now. If you commit the same data twice, it will be deduplicated because of content-addressing. If you commit almost the same data, only the part that is different will be written.
Learn More About Noms
For the decentralized web: The Decentralized Database
Learn the basics: Technical Overview
Tour the CLI: Command-Line Interface Tour
Tour the Go API: Go SDK Tour
API
The Public API will continue to evolve. Pull requests which represent breaking API changes should be marked with APIChange and sent to the slack channel and mailing list below for advance warning and feedback.
Contact Us
Interested in using Noms? Awesome! We would be happy to work with you to help understand whether Noms is a fit for your problem, or even to prioritize work that you need.
Reach out at noms@attic.io or via: