SQL in CockroachDB: Mapping Table Data to Key-Value Storage (2015)

From 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14728489

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10227516

I am surprised that they have a way to serialize compound keys but they don’t serialize the non-primary fields into a single value. Why wouldn’t that be obviously easier?

They have the primary key fields serialized in the key so they need code to make a match pattern against it etc. If the value contained the entire non-primary fields in the exact same format then that same pattern code could be used to evaluate where clauses on those fields too etc.

I would anticipate it also being massively massively faster and dramatically reduce write amplification etc.

“CockroachDB is the only database in the world that enables you to attach ‘location’ to your data at the row level”

^ this statement is so false