Hi danielvaughn thanks so much for the comment! We love CockroachDB and Planetscale! With SurrealDB we intended to build a database where you can use the best of the relational database world, the document database world, and the graph database world. You don't have to choose up front how you store your data, but you can use many different concepts to model and analyse your data once stored.

Then with the ability to connect directly form the client application or from web browsers, you don't have to build any API layer or logic layer in front of the database. Your data access permissions and authentication sit right inside the database (only if you want of course), enabling you to build applications quickly, directly against the database.