Matrix builder app

tRPC

Next.js

Prisma

Tailwind

Why?

Because there is just one tool available for building relational matrices of archeological sites, Stratify, and it was last updated thirteen years ago.

So I’ve decided to craft an online app to provide an alternative. It’s a project with “niche SAAS” ambition—more an opportunity to learn new things than to raise money.

Main Challenges

I’ve never dealt with graph data structures extensively before, so I’ve learned a lot of things while developing this app (e.g., what is “topological sort”, “transitive reduction,” and why and how to do such dark rituals).

Even after learning how to construct a graph, check for cycles, and reduce it, there is still the graphical matrix itself that needs to be built. I am currently using Reaflow, a react layer on top of Elk.js. It is a solid starter, but I’d probably need to create a fork and do some updates to compete with the features of 13-year-old Stratify. Also, the bundle size of these libs is huge (Elk has ca. 1.2M itself!).

It was also my first encounter with tRPC, which definitely has a learning curve, but once overcome, the DX is hardly comparable to whatever I’ve used since.

Also, I’ve never used Prisma extensively before. Sometimes, I’ve struggled quite a bit while building some queries, but the typescript definitions often helped a lot.

My solution

My solution is still work in progress. Please, Wait for updates.