Forge SQL vs KVS – A practical comparison for Marketplace developers For my latest project I switched from Forge Storage (KVS) to Forge SQL for the data layer. Here's what I learned and why it matters. The problem with KVS for structured data Forge Storage works fine for simple key-value lookups. But once your app stores scan results with multiple dimensions – severity, category, space, timestamp, status – you hit walls fast: Want all critical findings for a specific space? You're either fetching everything and filtering client-side, or maintaining multiple index keys manually. Aggregations ("how many issues per category?") require loading all records into memory. The query API has quirks – I've dealt with zombie data from partial writes that are painful to clean up. No way to do atomic updates across related records. What Forge SQL gives you Forge SQL provisions a MySQL-compatible database (TiDB under the hood) per installation. Actual tables, actual SQL. Concrete example – fetching findings: -- KVS approach: fetch all, filter in JS const all = await storage.query().where('key', startsWith('finding:')).getMany(); const filtered = all.results.filter(r => r.value.severity === 'critical' && r.value.spaceKey === 'ENG'); -- SQL approach: let the DB do the work SELECT * FROM findings WHERE severity = 'critical' AND space_key = 'ENG'; Aggregation: -- KVS: load everything, reduce in memory -- SQL: SELECT category, COUNT(*) as count, SUM(CASE WHEN severity = 'critical' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) as critical_count FROM findings GROUP BY category; For a cleanup tool where admins want dashboards, filtering, and bulk operations – night and day difference. The tradeoffs No foreign keys. JOINs work, CASCADE DELETE doesn't. You handle referential integrity yourself. Schema migrations go through a migrationRunner + scheduled trigger pipeline. More ceremony than just writing new KVS keys, but also more predictable. Adding SQL to an existing app triggers a major version upgrade. Every installed instance needs admin consent. If you're greenfield, no issue – if...
Summary:
• Developer switched from simple storage to SQL database for their marketplace app
• SQL allows complex searches and data analysis that simple storage can't handle
• Explains technical tradeoffs and when each approach works best for app developers