Building a Cross-Language ORM for SurrealDB with WASM

[JustKira]

Hi everyone,

I'm not entirely sure if this is the right place to ask, but lately, I've been working with a database called SurrealDB. After a month of using it, I decided to build my own ORM for my use case, which I did in TypeScript. It worked great, but as my projects have started to include Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Rust, I realized that writing the same ORM for each language is becoming a real pain.

That’s why I decided to explore WASM (WebAssembly) as a potential solution. However, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. I’m not sure where to start, or even if it’s possible to achieve what I have in mind. My plan is to build an ORM that includes a custom language for defining schemas and events, somewhat similar to Prisma. So, I’m wondering:

• Is it possible to build a cross-language ORM using WASM?
• How would I go about getting started with this kind of project?
• Are there specific challenges or things I should be aware of when implementing this?

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

[Arshia001]

Hey @JustKira!

So, there are multiple aspects to this matter. It is very much possible to put the core logic of the ORM in a WASM module and have it run everywhere. However...

• The ORM will probably need to communicate with the DB over the network, correct? This is possible with WASIX, but WASIX apps are just that: applications, with their own main thread, stdio streams, file system, networking layer, etc. Right now, it's not possible (at least to the best of my knowledge) to build WASIX libraries, as in modules that export functions that you can call to perform some action and get the result back.
• Actually putting that WASM module into each of your own apps requires embedding the entire Wasmer runtime into your apps. I'm guessing what you have is a micro-service ecosystem, and embedding Wasmer in your modules can bloat code size considerably; the official Wasmer binary is around 50MB.
• Also, you'd need to design an interop layer between the host (your apps) and the guest (the WASM binary of the ORM). This interop layer would need to be re-created per language anyway, and it may or may not be easier to just recreate the ORM depending on how complicated it is.
• To top it off, Wasmer isn't necessarily available in every language you wish to target. Rust and C/C++ are supported, and we have SDKs for JS/TS and Python, but we don't have an official C# SDK for example.

All in all, I think this is too much work to set up, will negatively impact performance, and I would recommend against it, but happy to help if you decide to do it!

[JustKira]

Wow, I knew almost nothing about WASM before this, and your explanation really helped me understand the challenges here. You definitely shed some light on how I should think about it!

From what you mentioned—especially "you'd need to design an interop layer between the host (your apps) and the guest (the WASM binary of the ORM)"—it sounds like a lot of overhead that I don't fully grasp yet 😆.

I think it might actually be easier to build the core engine (like the language itself) in Rust and then create a separate ORM implementation for each language I want to support. That way, I can avoid the complexity of WASM interop and just focus on making native solutions per language.

Thanks again for the insight!

[JustKira]

Ok, I have another question related to ORM. After sleepless nights of thinking about what you said—something ticket—if I build the query builder itself in Rust WASM and make a wrapper around it in each language I want to support, the idea is I'll just take a string from the query builder and give it to the client, which will be provided by each language, so no need for WASIX.

My question is, I have no idea how types would work and how the query builder would be able to infer types from a schema and return its results in WASM. I did it with TypeScript using what people call type gymnastics—a hacky way of making TypeScript understand types via a schema—but how would that work in this case? Any ideas?

[JustKira]

On a side note, I had another project in mind that I wanted to experiment with—building a "web browser", but not for the normal web. Instead, it would run custom applications (games). I wanted to create a web engine that runs games, with the sole purpose of testing out some ideas I have.

One challenge I don’t fully understand is: is it possible to ship WASM to that browser and run games? To be honest, I don’t know how to approach this or where to even start learning. I like the idea of a browser built for near-native performance, not for traditional web browsing, but for running applications with some limitations. I’m sure there are much smarter engineers who have thought about this idea before and maybe even tried it, possibly figuring out that it’s impossible—but I still want to give it a try.

The Idea
A browser where users hit a custom URL—not https://, but something like pixnet://mygame.com or whatever.

Now, why do I think I need WASM? I’m not entirely sure if that’s the right approach since I’ve never tried it, but I’m still exploring. If the core engine is written in Rust, how do I allow anyone to use whatever language Wasmer supports? Or maybe I could even try to add support for other languages somehow? I wrote and issue how to support lua and i got a answer which seems possible to do with my current skill level.

The goal is to allow people to build optimized games for my custom platform, which is aimed at running applications with near-native performance—which is exactly what WASM seems to claim it can do.

I talked about this idea with my friends, and we’re all super excited—but none of us have the skills to actually build it yet 😆. So I’m asking here:

Where should I start?
What keywords or technologies should I learn about to understand this better?
I feel like WASM is such a cool concept—build once, run anywhere. And after reading about WASIX (which I only understand about 10% of 😂), it seems like a huge milestone for something like this.

I know this is an ambitious project, but hey—I’m a 21-year-old guy with way too much energy, nothing to do, and a strong urge to build something cool. So why not give it a shot?
Would love to hear any thoughts, insights, or recommendations

Also is youtube channel video that i watched and i wanted to give it a shoot too Video 1 Video 2

[JustKira]

why im asking this because you said something rly cool sense its a browser so ill have wasmer runtime embedded anyway

[Arshia001]

If the core engine is written in Rust, how do I allow anyone to use whatever language Wasmer supports?

This is not an issue of which languages wasmer supports; Wasmer does not support any specific languages. It runs wasm modules, so as long as you can compile/transpile/package your code to WASM, it'll work. If you intend to use WASIX for the 'games', then it becomes a question of which languages can be made to work on WASIX.

Where should I start?

At the risk of sounding super-generic, start with a prototype. Make the smallest possible thing, and make it work. Then you'll know what challenges you face, and whether you can keep going or not.

And after reading about WASIX

It's worth keeping in mind that WASIX does not yet support any manner of graphics or rendering, nor access to the GPU, so it may not be suitable for games.

[JustKira]

but i can build some sort of api to give access gpu, like wrapper of some sort correct? like i guess ill have to build a core graphics engine into my broswer there it can be called by wasm? what do you think is that possible. sense anyway i was going to use webgpu so i think ppl can ship wgsl files? into binary or even my browser engine will fetch them on the go. not sure.

[Arshia001]

but i can build some sort of api to give access gpu, like wrapper of some sort correct?

Yes, absolutely. This is easier said than done though.