What Does a Governed Data Runtime Cost? TeaQL vs Diesel and SeaORM on MusicBrainz
TeaQL does more during a query than map database rows into Rust structs.
It preserves loaded, null, and not-loaded state. It builds an identity-consistent object graph. It carries query purpose and diagnostic comments. The same runtime also supports checker/fix behavior, mutation ledgers, audit boundaries, and cross-data-source relations.
That raises a fair question: what does this additional runtime model cost on a real relational graph?
We tested the current TeaQL Rust runtime against Diesel and SeaORM using a PostgreSQL copy of the public MusicBrainz database. The result is more useful than a simple winner: across three relationship shapes, TeaQL consistently landed between Diesel and SeaORM—and came within 3.4% of Diesel on one five-query graph.