How to decide if an ORM is decent? Just try to replicate every SQL query from nodejs/sequelize/raw/many_to_many.js on PostgreSQL and SQLite.
There is only a very finite number of possible reasonable queries on a two table many to many relationship with a join table. A decent ORM has to be able to do them all.
If it can do all those queries, then the ORM can actually do a good subset of SQL and is decent. If not, it can't, and this will make you suffer. E.g. Sequelize v5 is such an ORM that makes you suffer.
The next thing to check are transactions.
Basically, all of those come up if you try to implement a blog hello world world such as gothinkster/realworld correctly, i.e. without unnecessary inefficiencies due to your ORM on top of underlying SQL, and dealing with concurrency.
LevelDB by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
One "LevelDB" database contains multiple file in a directory. Off the bat inferior to SQLite which stores everything in a single file!
MongoDB by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
List databases:
echo 'show dbs' | mongo
Delete database:
use mydb
db.dropDatabase()
or:
echo 'db.dropDatabase()' | mongo mydb
View collections within a database:
echo 'db.getCollectionNames()' | mongo mydb
Show all data from one of the collections: stackoverflow.com/questions/24985684/mongodb-show-all-contents-from-all-collections
echo 'db.collectionName.find()' | mongo mydb
Local server by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Server run on the current machine. That's how all websites are developed and born!
Tested as of Ubuntu 20.04, there is no Mongo package available by default due to their change to Server Side Public License, which Debian opposed. Therefore, you have to add their custom PPA as mentioned at: docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/
SQL example by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
We have some runnable SQL examples with assertion under the sequelize/raw directory.
These examples are written in the Sequelize library using raw queries.
Sequelize is used minimally, just to feed raw queries in transparently to any underlying database, and get minimally parsed results out for us, which we then assert with standard JavaScript. The queries themselves are all written by hand.
By default the examples run on SQLite. Just like the examples from sequelize example, you can set the database at runtime as:
Here we list only examples which we believe are standard SQL, and should therefore work across different SQL implementations:
MySQL by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Create user for further logins without sudo askubuntu.com/questions/915585/how-to-login-mysql-shell-when-mysql-have-no-password/1325689#1325689:
sudo mysql -e "CREATE USER $USER"
Create test user with password:
sudo mysql -e 'CREATE USER user0 IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY "a"'
sudo mysql -e 'GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON database_name.* TO "user0"'
and login as that user:
mysql -u user0 -p
Login with password given on the command line:
mysql -u user0 -pmypassword
The IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password part is to overcome "Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server" when connecting from Node.js.
List users:
sudo mysql -e 'SELECT * FROM mysql.user'
View permissions for each user on each DB: serverfault.com/questions/263868/how-to-know-all-the-users-that-can-access-a-database-mysql
sudo mysql -e 'SELECT * FROM mysql.db'
List databases:
sudo mysql -e 'SHOW DATABASES'
Create database:
sudo mysql -e 'CREATE DATABASE mydb0'
Destroy database:
sudo mysql -e 'DROP DATABASE mydb0'
Show tables in database:
sudo mysql -e 'SHOW TABLES' mydb0
or:
sudo mysql -e 'SHOW TABLES FROM mydb0'
MariaDB by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Dude's a legend. Sells company for a few million. Then forks the open source project next year. Love it.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact