FoundationDB and the New NoSQL
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8729420
Databases at 14.4Mhz ()
292 points by chton 3 days ago 85 comments> As interesting as these new developments–called “NoSQL databases”–were, though, only bleeding-edge startups and a tiny handful of other dreamers were really taking them seriously.
What is this shit? Seriously, wtf. I mean, sure, Mongo saw a lot of use among the mentally challenged, but a _lot_ of big companies have _big_ NoSQL clusters in production. Hell, according to datastax, a quarter of the Fortune 100 use Cassandra..
> <couple of tweets about how non-AD databases are a bit shit>
> MongoDB is not ACID compliant. Neither is Cassandra. Neither is Riak. Neither is Redis. Etc etc etc.
The fact that C*, riak, etc aren't ACID isn't a point against them; it's a calculated tradeoff. It's only a problem when they are advertised as being ACID, and I'll happily join you in condemning them if they do call themselves ACID when they are not
We are seeing the rise of "NewSQL" (that is, datastores with transactions), but that does _not_ mean the death of NoSQL, and it does _not_ automatically imply superiority to NoSQL. It's about choice, and that is fucking awesome. Stop trying to induce some twisted total ordering on each consistency model. It doesn't exist. As long as a consistency model is clearly documented, accurately implemented (yeah, I know, I can dream), then there is no innate superiority. Stop trying to create one.
Actually, not being ACID is absolutely a point against them.
Riak at least has an good reason: it's eventually consistent. They are getting the advantages of better latency and disconneced-operation.
But, if you look at MongoDB, Cassandra (as it is usually config'ed), and HBase they are actually all strongly consistent. They've already accepted the strong-consistency side of the CAP theorem tradeoff. There is no remaining reason not to have transactions at that point, but they don't. This isn't because of some fundamental tradeoff, it's because making transactions run correctly and fast is really hard and they haven't yet cracked that problem. I bet it's on all of their roadmaps. If and when they add multi-key serializable ACID transactions their products will be purely better for it.
I think you're saying that people use Cassandra with consistency=ALL everywhere to get strong consistency? In that case, sure, then they should look at something else. Potentially even the database your company produces. However, that is a strawman; Cassandra was designed to be an AP system. Later additions like tuneable consistency and lightweight transactions are a compromise, and implementing something as crazy as ACID transactions on C* would be insane. Like, totally stupid. It is so far from the core goal of an AP system, that I would be very worried about the leadership of the project.
I like my databases to do one thing, and do it well. That's why I like basic C*: it's an awesome AP KV database. Features that have been added later have generally been syntactic sugar (CQL, indexes, multi column indexes, user types), or compromises (tuneable consistency, lightweight transactions). But it still remains an AP system at heart. And because of that, ACID transactions would _not_ improve the product. It would all but destroy it.
You should probably mention that you were a founder of FoundationDB if you're going to comment on articles about it.
See arangodb.com.
ArangoDB (document database)