Ti-Click: Quickly Build TiDB Online Lab via Browser | Ti-Click Team Interview

There are many ideas and projects in the Hackathon competition. The team spirit of cooperating, not afraid of difficulties, and supporting each other in the team is even more valuable. Therefore, the Hackathon award is a matter in our hearts, because after all, he represents the judges' recognition of our project; but not winning is not a big deal, because there is such a team, what more can I ask for!

——Ti-can be immediately

In the TiDB Hackathon 2021 event, the Ti-Click project developed by the Ti-Knowable team quickly built a laboratory for the development and online compilation of TiDB-based Example App through an online IDE, which can improve the user's initial experience of the TiDB ecosystem. In addition, it allows users to try multiple services including TiDB Cloud services online, reducing the complexity of the TiDB ecosystem for early adopters. The Ti-Click project won unanimous praise from the judges and the audience, and finally made it to the top 20 of this Hackathon.

"TiClick is one of my favorite projects, I personally gave the highest score, not because of Sai's passionate speech, nor because of the cool web interface, but because I saw how TiDB can better attract developers One direction. For developers to learn TiDB, I believe that it is a SaaS service in the future. Developers can learn about TiDB directly through the browser. This project has made me see the feasibility of landing, and I hope to land quickly. However, I also know that I still hope to support Github SSO login on TiDB Cloud first, support open API, and become more friendly to developers, so as to lay the foundation for the subsequent ecological expansion."

——Judge Tang Liu

What prompted the three of you to form a team?
All three of us are colleagues from the front line of users, the community and the market. We believe that the formation of a team is not only due to fate, but also because of our persistent belief in the TiDB community. Our team even has the first TiDB certified instructor in Japan. We all agree that the belief in a win-win TiDB community is what brings us together.

The Story of the "Ti-Available Immediately" Team Name
We found that not only TiDB, but also many Infra products (basic software) have difficulty reaching consumers. That is to say, it only uses documentation to tell developers how to use the product, but does not understand the expectations of developers. In fact, as a developer, what I'm more looking forward to is to try it out. Although various manufacturers have launched free preferential policies for trial versions, you must know that it is difficult for developers to get started with products with Infra product attributes. In the end, we still face the dilemma of why to try (Why), what to try (What) and how to try (How). We felt that instead of letting the developer think about this, we should help him think.

Therefore, Ti-Click has connected with TiDB and TiDB Cloud from the beginning, and has a complete teaching guide (Why), and also provides languages based on Java, Python, Golang, Nodejs, Django, PHP, Laravel, Springboot, etc. Or the framework's rich style case (What), just click in the browser, you can easily deploy a style program (How) in the cloud through the browser.

Ti-can be used immediately, of course, it is also a homophonic of Click, we think it is very in line with our product definition, and it also conveys our philosophy.

How to deal with the intense project preparation work of Hackathon with an international team distributed in three time zones?
As the first international team of Hackathon over the years, the Ti-Ke Immediately team has all members distributed in different countries and different time zones. It faces great challenges in the division of labor among team members and the promotion of projects.

In terms of the division of labor among team members, after the team was established on December 22, development began. Among them, Pheobe is mainly responsible for project promotion and product positioning at Ti-Click because he was mainly researching documents and training directions. This video is also produced by our talented women. Mr. Du Zhigang is mainly responsible for the development of PHP and Golang product examples and the overcoming of difficult projects. For example, in this competition, we imported the wonderful case of the Laravel component developed by the Colopl team, which is Mr. Du's magic touch. Chengchen is mainly responsible for the construction of the entire platform, as well as the example development of Java, SpringBoot, Node.js, Python and Django.

In terms of the overall advancement of the project, because we have many years of work experience, after the division of labor is clearly defined, everyone still promotes the project very clearly. We didn't set a timeline, but basically everyone came out with the work at a reasonable time. And the completion of the work is very high, basically it is the final demo version. Even back-to-back, team members will regularly report on the current development progress, reassuring teammates that everyone has a strong Owner spirit for the projects they want to implement. So rather than arranging projects to move forward, we are an example of an intrinsically driven type.

About Team Work
Many times in the preparation and progress of Hackathon, when encountering emergencies, we will also take the initiative to stand up and provoke heavy burdens. For example, our team originally wanted to be explained online by Pheobe. However, when faced with the requirement of on-site explanation for the defense. Chengchen took the initiative to take up the important task and explained the project on the spot. During this period, we prepared trial lectures over and over again, and finally we were lucky to qualify in the qualifiers. After learning that we could participate in the finals, we began to prepare for the rematch without stopping. Cheng Chen went all out to prepare the final speech, while Du Zhigang and Pheobe worked all night to make a video explaining the Ti-Click Ecosystem.

In addition to participating in the competition, we also need to deal with a lot of work at hand, and everyone is basically non-stop 24 hours a day. For example, a partner in the Asia-Pacific region will be handed over to a partner in North America at 1:00 am, and a partner in North America will be handed over to the partner in the Asia-Pacific region in the afternoon of Asia-Pacific time. This also created the team emotion of "put my back on my teammates".

There are many ideas and projects in the Hackathon competition, and the team spirit of cooperation, fearlessness and mutual support in the team is even more valuable. Therefore, we also want to share the team spirit of Ti-Kai Immediately with everyone.

The Hackathon's award is something in our hearts, because after all, he represents the judges' recognition of our project; but it's not a big deal if you don't win, because with such a team, what more can you ask for!

About the Ti-Click Project
Now the information available to a wide audience in TiDB, whether it is text, video or interactive teaching, is more centered on the database itself. For example: how to build a distributed SQL database, what are the advantages of such a database, how to run a TiDB Cluster, try TiDB SQL, etc. The perspective we hope to create is from the perspective of application developers in the overall software development ecosystem, how to connect and use TiDB. Although TiDB is compatible with MySQL 5.7, there are still some differences. In addition, there are differences between different versions. In order to make Java/Python/Node.js/Golong/PHP/C# application developers faster Try TiDB, and intuitively understand how to deal with these differences through code. With this intuitive interactive foundation, developers will be more willing to understand the advantages and advantages of TiDB, such as the scalability advantages of TiDB, although it is a distributed database, it still ensures strong data consistency, OLAP and OLTP are both grasped Both hands have to be hard and so on.

What's the latest plan for the project after the Hackathon?
On the one hand, we want to push forward the development of Ti-Click, such as replacing ordinary containers with lightweight virtual machines, improving security policies to prevent container escape, and adding related peripheral test samples. On the other hand, we will also provide different product series for developers, DBAs and architects in more fields, which will greatly improve the user experience of the entire product.