Better API/DB piece

[jamesmarlowe]

No one likes sails, and it's not solving our problems well enough, and its devs are leaving. On top of which, we have new things we need to do that it won't handle well like dumping diffs via xml/csv to Caseworthy. And trying to get our auth to do what we want means completely designing/implementing/testing the whole permissions system. All of that I could get past, except that now sails won't even start up. I previously said we were too far down the sails hole to find something else, but I now think I was wrong and it's not a good choice to stay. Now that we know what we need from an API/DB solution, we're in a better place to make an informed choice.

New thing considerations:

• support and docs (maintained by a company not a guy)
• authentication/ permissions (connect to our login flow and support complex rules)
• database it connects to (postgresql/mongo/etc)
• ease of access from javascript
• export to csv/xml
• documentation generation
• testing
• schema/view definition language
• ES6 compatible
• management interface
• compatibility with HUD standard
• SQL vs. NOSQL
• loss/redoing of work
• ease of use

Some possible options:

• https://loopback.io/ (IBM)
  • complex permissions http://loopback.io/doc/en/lb3/Authentication-authorization-and-permissions.html
  • respond xml http://loopback.io/doc/en/lb3/config.json.html
  • connect to postgres https://github.com/strongloop/loopback-connector-postgresql
  • generated docs http://loopback.io/doc/en/lb3/Use-API-Explorer.html
• https://hapijs.com/ (Walmart)
• https://firebase.google.com/products/database/ (Google) (Auth0 can connect)
• http://couchdb.apache.org/ (Apache)
• https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/ (Amazon)
• http://www.django-rest-framework.org/