Kindred and CockroachDB Partner to Build a Global Online Gaming Platform | Hacker News Reader

Kindred and CockroachDB Partner to Build a Global Online Gaming Platform

cockroachlabs.com

44 pointsjinqueeny13 comments

> By working with CockroachDB, we expect to be able to operate multiple active data centers – all perfectly synchronised with each other

...

> Outside of Google, there is no solution like this available anywhere

Cassandra offers cross WAN, multi-DC strong consistency so the “no solution exists” line is nonsense. I built geo-aware, cross DC gaming platforms for ps3/x360 on Cassandra in 2009.

Unless this is another fun twist on words where they’re pretending like they’re beating CAP like how google asserts that their network is sufficiently reliable that partitions become a nonfactor, but of course the wording is a PR so who knows what they actually mean.

FWIW, CockroachDB doesn't claim to beat CAP: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/limits-of-the-cap-theorem

There were Jepsen tests done on Cassandra a few years ago: https://aphyr.com/posts/294-jepsen-cassandra that showed various failures. Some of these haven't been fixed yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592269. So I think it's safe to claim that Cassandra doesn't offer strong consistency.

Another report from Kindred here: http://www.kindredgroup.com/kindred-futures-and-cockroach-la...

Another great NewSQL database, TiDB, is production ready: https://github.com/pingcap/tidb

> Outside of Google, there is no solution like this available anywhere.

Then why not use Google service (I think it is spanner)?

Costs, freedom to modify/finetune the product, vendor lock-in, geographic restrictions. There are a lot of reasons not always to go with one of the big 3 cloud providers.

I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that only one company has the knowledge of providing a certain technology used by other companies.

EDIT:

> Kindred is a rapidly growing, global business with strict data privacy and technical requirements.

That probably explains why not to use Google Cloud or any other US based provider for EU data.

There's comdb2: https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2

Wow, comdb2 is hard to Google anything for. Seems google interprets 'comdb2' as 'sql', with highlights and all. `comdb2 performance` just shows sql performance articles.

Unless that's just because no resources actually exist, heh

Looks like it doesn't have built-in sharding (from the docs, readme)

> I’m sure at times our internal processes - pretty much inevitable for a medium size company - have meant we have moved a little slower than Cockroach would have been able to, as a smaller more agile company but they understood that and were happy to move at our pace.

What does this mean exactly？

If 'our' refers to Kindred I think they are saying that they believe that they move slowly as a company and that they believe this is due to their size. They also believe that Cockroach moves more quickly and they believe that this is due to Cockroach being 'agile'. He then says that Cockroach is fine with moving slowly with them.

These sound like euphemisms for "We are a company where decisions are not based on trust so they require a lot of red tape. Cockroach's team does not have to wait for decision makers to cover themselves from potential backfire as much and as such can start development of things more quickly. They are willing however to provide our managers with ass-covering materials such as certifications, domain models and requirement documents that start with 'an overview of the company' and add with a 'glossary' though."

It's probably worth noting that Kindred operates in a highly-regulated industry, which may affect the wisdom of making many decisions based on trust.

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