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Why we lost Uber as a user

postgresql.org

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Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#291

Post by lsaferite »

babuskov wrote: post #28
matthewmacleod wrote: post #11

The PoststgreSQL project never fails to impress me. I know that there are some use cases which are not currently covered by it versus alternatives, but I have consistently got the feeling that everybody involved in the project is supremely professional and interested in building an excellent database – and the focus is on how to work to fix these use cases, instead of pointless mudslinging. Class act.

> The PoststgreSQL project never fails to impress me. Except the name is a bit clunky and hard to write ;)

The variations on the project name I've read in this thread alone are amusing.

Three of them being: Postgre Postgreql PoststgreSQL

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#292

Post by [deleted] »

vertex-four wrote: post #240
nilkn wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that more or less just make them into a taxi company? That approach just wasn't working well. The main difference between Uber and taxi companies is that Uber fully utilized modern technology from the ground up to build the platform, and as a result they were able to realize major improvements in terms of speed, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.

I think Uber is, in practice, an unregulated taxi company, allowing it to cut costs and pay its drivers less, and it would be just as popular if it had no tech at all.

[deleted]

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#293

Post by paulddraper »

scottmmjackson wrote: post #188
raverbashing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, they're admitting there's a problem (which exists for this very specific user case) and not just deflecting the criticism. I'm impressed, I'd say a lot of projects couldn't have handled this so nicely

They're trying to "Do One Thing And Do It Well". It's always interesting how core UNIX philosophy often gets lost in Startup Culture's rush to "Disrupt The World".

Databases do lots of stuff: authentication, data persistence, query optimization, process management, even an file system.

They are not the prime example I would use for DOTADIW.

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#294

Post by kod »

ec109685 wrote: post #274
methehack wrote: post #145

Does anyone else think the scenario in the explanation is an unreasonable request to make of a relational database? I think that if you've created a design that requires you to update a 50K row table 500 times a second that itself is heavily indexed and used heavily in joins, you have a software design problem more than a database problem. I wouldn't expect any database to handle that and am surprised that mysql does…

500 updates is nothing for a modern database. 10k's of updates is no sweat on modern hardware. What is so scary about this load?

Multiply the number of updates times the number of indexes. Then consider that with such a small table, there's going to be contention for the same rows. Updates actually create new rows, so vacuum needs to be able to remove older, no-longer-visible versions of the row. But vacuum can't keep up, because at any given time many versions of the row are potentially visible.

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#295

Post by VLM »

ec109685 wrote: post #273
VLM wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better standard HN car analogy: Postgreql is trustworth and predictable and engineered and engineerable. Its like a German union automobile plant press operator sitting down on the job and crossing his arms until the broken safety switch is fixed, which will take precisely 3.25 hours and cost $X while the resulting assembly line shutdown costs 1000 x $X. But it'll be safe and nobody gonna lose an arm. Your downtime…

Can you site any of this? Facebook, Twitter, Google (for a long while), Uber, Yahoo all run critical systems on MySQL.

No I won't.

However there is an important point that philosophy doesn't matter when times are good. Its only when the tool is misused or there's a malfunction that the underlying philosophy even shows up.

It doesn't matter which system you use when you try to store Aug 1 2016 into a date column, but (at least in the old days) it was very interesting trying to store February 30th into the databases. Insert anyway with a warning? Round up, down, or stick in a null? Normalize it to being March 2nd ish? Insert fails completely with an error? This has varies with time and configuration but in a "general sweep of history" manner you can guess correctly most of the time what each DB does.

Also there's nothing wrong in any way with a critical system that drops into philosophical best effort mode during a crisis rather than paralytic halt mode. Well, there's nothing wrong with it as long as the system was engineered with that in mind and neither the dev nor ops people are surprised by that behavior. Sometimes that is the right thing to do.

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#296

Post by derefr »

paulddraper wrote: post #293
scottmmjackson wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're trying to "Do One Thing And Do It Well". It's always interesting how core UNIX philosophy often gets lost in Startup Culture's rush to "Disrupt The World".

Databases do lots of stuff: authentication, data persistence, query optimization, process management, even an file system. They are not the prime example I would use for DOTADIW.

Provide one abstraction and provide it well, maybe?

Puts me in mind of something I've seen done in Redis, and in the OSX (really NeXT) CoreFoundation container classes. In both, you instantiate an abstract data-structure based on worst-case time-space guarantees you want from its API. Then, the implementation actually instantiates it as one of several underlying concrete classes, usually starting with one that wins for low content sizes just because of fewer dereferences needed (e.g. a "ziplist" in Redis); and then migrates the content to a different underlying concrete container transparently when content reaches a certain size.

In both cases, you're giving the user a cleaner abstraction that they can think less about, but you're accomplishing it by making the computer itself do far more internal book-keeping, and creating a much more heavily-engineered design.

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#297

Post by schoen »

kpil wrote: post #265
schoen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ü in über is pronounced [y]. I wonder if IPA originally got this symbol from Finnish orthography, then.

I think you will find [y] in most Germanic languages, including German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, (most likely) Icelandic, and Dutch, so probably not. But it is a very "Finnish" vowel though... Hyyvää! Besides, Widenius is Swedish speaking (just like Linus Thorvalds and about 10% of the people of Finland) and the name "My" was more or less invented by the also Swedish speaking Finnish author Tove Jansson in her boo…

Oh, thanks! I was led astray by people earlier in the thread mentioning Finnish and so I simply assumed Monty's first language was Finnish, which, as you point out, it isn't.

Maybe Monty should upload an .au file somewhere saying "Hello, this is Monty Widenius, and I pronounce MySQL as MySQL"!

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#298

Post by dkersten »

viraptor wrote: post #246
dkersten wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently advised by a DB consultant whose area of expertise is MySQL that 5.7 is still too new and risky and that he would advise against upgrading for at least another 6 months or more. He feels that the releases come out much, much too unstable and unpolished and that it typically takes at least a year since release before he's comfortable running it in production. I don't know enough about MySQL to know if t…

Beware slight ddl incompatibilities. For example Maria will dump timestamp field size, which mysql doesn't understand (or was it the other way around?...)

Thanks!

Re: Why we lost Uber as a user

#299

Post by stevenwiles »

raverbashing wrote: post #30
matthewmacleod wrote: post #11

The PoststgreSQL project never fails to impress me. I know that there are some use cases which are not currently covered by it versus alternatives, but I have consistently got the feeling that everybody involved in the project is supremely professional and interested in building an excellent database – and the focus is on how to work to fix these use cases, instead of pointless mudslinging. Class act.

True, they're admitting there's a problem (which exists for this very specific user case) and not just deflecting the criticism. I'm impressed, I'd say a lot of projects couldn't have handled this so nicely

True, this is certainly a commendable move on their part and while they are making the right decision here, I feel they've shown real professionalism and class.

Color me impressed as well.

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