Dolt is a version controlled SQL database. How would you use such a thing?

Are you building a data curation application for your customers? Are your customers asking for version control features like branches, merges, and diffs? Are you looking for a tool to add those features to your application easily?

FJA chose Dolt to back their insurance plan management application. Dolt's diffs, branches, and merges integrate seamlessly into their application providing powerful version control features for their customers.

FJA

FJA builds health insurance plan management software. Building a functional, profitable health insurance plan is complicated, with many configurable components.

FJA sells this software as on-premise, hosted, and Software as a Service deployments to major insurers worldwide.

Why FJA Chose Dolt

FJA's customers build and edit complex configuration data using FJA's suite of software tools. As you can imagine, version control of configuration data was a much-needed customer feature request. Change logs, branches, merges, and diffs would help FJA's customers save time and money configuring and managing their plans.

FJA found Dolt in 2021 and has been using Dolt in production since 2022. Dolt made building version control into their application easy.

Using Dolt Primitives

FJA did not want to expose the Git model of version control to their customers. Git is esoteric and complicated. For instance, checkout does at least three things, maybe more. Nobody really knows for sure.

Instead, FJA wanted to tailor the Git version control model to their less technical audience. For instance, branches became workspaces. Merges became migrations.

FJA used Dolt's SQL interface to build their own custom version control model. Dolt exposes all Git functionality as system tables, functions, and procedures. This interface makes it easy to write software accessing Dolt via SQL that exposes Git primitives in a custom way. FJA was easily able to use Git primitives to build their custom version control functionality.

For example, to build the diff functionality displayed above, FJA used the dolt_diff and dolt_diff_<table> system tables as well as the dolt_diff_stat() table function. Dolt made it fast and easy to expose this functionality to their customers.

Dolt in Production

Some of the country’s largest and most influential insurers use FJA. It’s likely that your insurance plan is configured using Dolt!

FJA white labels Dolt. FJA packages Dolt in the Docker container they ship to customers. Customers are blissfully unaware of the powerful, new version controlled database they are running underneath the FJA hood.

FJA opted for Enterprise support for peace of mind. If FJA's customers have an issue, they can rely on DoltHub's 24/7 support to get those issues fixed in a timely manner.

FJA regularly asks questions to Dolt engineers. It's a great partnership. Timo Staudinger from FJA says, "Dolt engineers are the most responsive we've encountered. Most bugs we find are fixed in 24 hours or less. We aspire to provide the same level of support here at FJA."

Conclusion

Dolt made adding version control to FJA's application a breeze. FJA loves DoltHub's Enterprise support for their self-deployed implementation. Sound like something that could help you at your company? Join our Discord and let's discuss your use case.