Is Pipedream OK? Short notice forced transition from service.db to data stores (in alpha release status)

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I recently received an email which notified me of the impending transition to datastores in 2 weeks (Action Required: Pipedream retiring $.service.db in favor of Data Stores). I also notice that data stores is labeled as alpha status.

Is pipedream OK? It isn’t a good indicator of a stable product that functionality is being depreciated with little warning and replaced with an incomplete feature.

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@eaptdudfield I apologize for the miss on the messaging. I was responsible for making that call and I’m happy to walk you through exactly what happened. I’m also happy to personally hop on a call / Zoom and help you transition, if that would help.

Even though data stores are labeled as Alpha, it is stable. We label products as “alpha” primarily when the API is subject to change. As we receive more feedback about data stores, we are likely to improve it. It’s possible that some of those changes will be breaking changes. But clearly the Alpha label doesn’t communicate all of that clearly, so we need to do a better job of clarifying this.

Since we had launched the v2 product only recently, few users were using $.service.db in workflows and actions. Maintaining both the codebase and the $.service.db service has an associated cost, so we would rather deprecate it quickly and focus all of our engineering effort on Data Stores to give all users a better experience.

There are clear next steps on our end based on your feedback:

  • Better clarify the state of features when we ship them, and clearly communicate what Alpha means.
  • Give you more time to transition. 2 weeks is clearly not enough time.

Would that have helped? Is there anything else we can do better here?

Finally - is there something about Data stores you believe is incomplete? It actually provides a superset of the functionality available in $.service.db so I’m curious if there’s something specific you’d like to see.

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I appreciate both the tone and speed of your response! In reviewing what I have deployed, the 2 weeks is enough time to transition. And I’m using $.service.db primarily as a basic cache, so the existing functionality is fine.

You’ve addressed my concern around messaging as well. Thanks!

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Glad to hear! Let us know if you need anything else or have any other feedback on how to make Pipedream better.

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