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I don't totally understand the value of the second, but isn't the first already exist in things like BigQuery?

Or a traditional database with read-only credentials and a function that adds "ORDER BY version DESC LIMIT 1".

but is a traditional database cryptographically secure? if a super user with write permissions (or, say, direct access to the physical data store) modifies records are users able to validate the integrity of the data?

You could use permissions and stored procedures that ensure append only.

The difference is that client applications does not need to trust proper "append-only" permissions were enforced on server side but they will be have the chance to detect any tampering while in the former approach, it won't be noticeable

Users just need to insert signed data into the database for tamper-proofing.

that's basically what I do in bigquery sometimes just with a time or timestamp column 'last_updated' and a uuid

> isn't the first already exist in things like BigQuery?

You can truncate a BQ table and reload it if you want to change things. Had to do this at a previous gig (twice a day!) because the data warehouse people would only take data from BQ but the main data was in Firebase (yes, it was an insane place.)

oh that sounds horrible !! i would be terrified to mess that up

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