SurrealDB is Not a Silver Bullet: 3 Scenarios Where You Still Need a Backend

The "No-Backend" Hangover Look, I know what I said. In my previous posts, I praised SurrealDB like it was the end of the "traditional" backend era. And for 80% of projects, it might be. But as a medior dev who’s seen his fair share of architectural disasters, I have to be honest: SurrealDB is not magic. If you try to build everything directly on top of the database, you’re eventually going to hit a wall. Sometimes, you just need a "boring" server running Node, Rust, or Go. Here are three reasons why I’m not deleting my Express/Hono repositories just yet. 1. The "Secret Key" Problem (Integrations) SurrealDB can handle authentication, but it shouldn't be your "Integration Hub." If your app needs to talk to Stripe, SendGrid, or a 3rd party AI API, you have a problem. You cannot—and I repeat, CAN NOT—expose your secret API keys to the frontend, even with the best Row-Level Security in the world. The Reality Check: Anything that requires a sensitive handshake with another service belongs in