> and ensuring that a centralized entity cannot mutate data secretly
Hello paranoia.
Ask HN: Is there an immutable and decentralized database out there?
11–16 of 16 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there an immutable and decentralized database out there?
#12> and ensuring that a centralized entity cannot mutate data secretly Hello paranoia.
Justified paranoia :)
Re: Ask HN: Is there an immutable and decentralized database out there?
#13I believe you're describing what is typically referred to as an "append only" datastore. The biggest-name in the game is Google BigQuery. From their docs: "BigQuery tables are append-only. The query language does not currently support either updating or deleting data. In order to update or delete data, you must delete the table, then recreate the table with new data. Alternatively, you could write a query that modifi…
Thanks for your suggestion. The fact that data written to BigQuery can still be modified is not so great for my case. I want to be able to make data immutable forever. Nobody should be able to modify or delete it. Malicious alterations should not affect other nodes holding replicated data.
I remember watching a talk about apache Samza [1] that tries to envision a database model that would be truly append only. It is based on Apache Kafka, so it would satisfy your "distributed" and "immutable forever" requirements.
Talk was really interesting, I haven't used it yet, so I am not sure how mature for use as the canonical data-store it is.
As my college professor would put it "I don't thing these have found their Ulman yet." and if you look at companies using it now [2] it seems mostly stream-processing/data-analytics.
Another thing is, I really don't know how Kafka handles checking of the data authenticity, because in my mind there is not that big of a difference between malicious alteration and malicious append.
Because if you then use something like CRDT [3], or DDD style agregates [4] on top of your immutable data , your end users would still see their view on data mutate.
The thing the immutability would mostly give you is log of all the changes and simple way to restore it. And most mutable databases give you that capability as well.
[1] http://www.confluent.io/blog/turning-the-database-inside-out... [2] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SAMZA/Powered+By [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-free_replicated_data_... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design#Building_...
Re: Ask HN: Is there an immutable and decentralized database out there?
#14I believe you're describing what is typically referred to as an "append only" datastore. The biggest-name in the game is Google BigQuery. From their docs: "BigQuery tables are append-only. The query language does not currently support either updating or deleting data. In order to update or delete data, you must delete the table, then recreate the table with new data. Alternatively, you could write a query that modifi…
BigQuery is great for read and analytics. It's one of the best products I have used. But, it may not suit high frequency inserts (not a transactional DB). Also, the insert only "limitation" may not exist in the future.
Re: Ask HN: Is there an immutable and decentralized database out there?
#15Can you say more about why you're avoiding the blockchain?
Re: Ask HN: Is there an immutable and decentralized database out there?
#16Can you say more about why you're avoiding the blockchain?
I am not exactly avoiding the blockchain. There isn't any production ready database that I am aware of that provides immutability like the blockchain and an advanced querying system like NoSQL database systems.
I looked at BlockchainDB which solves my immutability requirement but I don't think it's production ready yet and if I host one myself, I can mutate the data by destroying my BlockchainDB machine.