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Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

cloudplatform.googleblog.com

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Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#61

Post by caleblloyd »

koolba wrote: post #5

> Today, we’re excited to announce the public beta for Cloud Spanner, a globally distributed relational database service that lets customers have their cake and eat it too: ACID transactions and SQL semantics, without giving up horizontal scaling and high availability. This is a bold claim. What do they know about the CAP theorem that I don't? Separately, (emphasis mine): > If you have a MySQL or PostgreSQL system th…

> From the rest of the article it seems like the wire protocol for accessing it is MySQL. I wonder if they mean to add a PostgreSQL compatibility layer at some point.

It looks like the wire protocol is Protocol Buffers and client libraries will likely use GRPC: https://cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/reference/rpc/google.s...

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#62

Post by pramsey »

runeks wrote: post #27

I wonder why they charge a minimum of $0.90 per node-hour when they offer VMs for as little as $0.008/hr. This is hugely useful even for single-person startups, so why charge a minimum of ~$8,000 per year?

Concur. The pricing makes sense for their "target market" of folks who currently have a "bursting at the seams" MySQL or PgSQL instance, but it locks out folks just getting started with a tiny database and low load. This seems like bad positioning: the "bursting" folks will have to decide between the cost of re-hosting their whole system on the Cloud Spanner and trying to incrementally keep their current platform running; the small folks who would like to organically grow on a platform without scaling limits are locked out of the low end, so by the the time they are big enough to need Cloud Spanner... they too with be forced into the "re-host or muddle on" decision.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#63

Post by tazjin »

karlding wrote: post #47

I wonder how this will affect adoption of CockroachDB [1], which was inspired by Spanner and supposedly an open source equivalent. I'd imagine that Spanner is a rather compelling choice, since they don't have to host it themselves. As far as I know, CockroachDB currently does not support providing CockroachDB as a service (but it is on their roadmap) [2]. [1] https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/frequently-asked-questi…

The main sales pitch of Cloud Spanner is Google's network infrastructure.

No startup will be able to replicate that anytime soon, a lot of time (and money) has been put into it by a lot of people over a long time.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#66

Post by saycheese »

koolba wrote: post #39
tedd4u wrote: post #33

The team here at Quizlet did a lot of performance testing on Spanner with one of our MySQL workloads to see if it's an option for us. Here are the test results: https://quizlet.com/blog/quizlet-cloud-spanner

What's the SQL and wire compatibility level? MySQL? EDIT: Found quite a bit of my answers in your linked article: > Cloud Spanner uses a SQL dialect which matches the ANSI SQL:2011 standard with some extensions for Spanner-specific features. This is a SQL standard simpler than that used in non-distributed databases such as vanilla MySQL, but still supports the relational model (e.g. JOINs). It includes data-definitio…

Seems more like they want all the data that ever existed for the database.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#67

Post by deesix »

koolba wrote: post #39
tedd4u wrote: post #33

The team here at Quizlet did a lot of performance testing on Spanner with one of our MySQL workloads to see if it's an option for us. Here are the test results: https://quizlet.com/blog/quizlet-cloud-spanner

What's the SQL and wire compatibility level? MySQL? EDIT: Found quite a bit of my answers in your linked article: > Cloud Spanner uses a SQL dialect which matches the ANSI SQL:2011 standard with some extensions for Spanner-specific features. This is a SQL standard simpler than that used in non-distributed databases such as vanilla MySQL, but still supports the relational model (e.g. JOINs). It includes data-definitio…

Just to be clear, the JOINS were removed for the vertical sharding prior to looking at Cloud Spanner. Cloud Spanner fully supports complex JOINS of many times (e.g. INNER, OUTER)

Details - https://cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/query-syntax#join-type...

Disclaimer: I work on Cloud Spanner

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#68

Post by rrdharan »

obstinate wrote: post #55
karlding wrote: post #47

I wonder how this will affect adoption of CockroachDB [1], which was inspired by Spanner and supposedly an open source equivalent. I'd imagine that Spanner is a rather compelling choice, since they don't have to host it themselves. As far as I know, CockroachDB currently does not support providing CockroachDB as a service (but it is on their roadmap) [2]. [1] https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/frequently-asked-questi…

I imagine the globally distributed database market is big enough for more than one winner. The presence of competitors can sometimes even be a boon, increasing the visibility of a market's goods relative to other similar goods.

And assuming some reasonable compatibility/portability/migration story it can help in reducing the rational fear of proprietary lock-in.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#69

Post by koolba »

deesix wrote: post #67
koolba wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the SQL and wire compatibility level? MySQL? EDIT: Found quite a bit of my answers in your linked article: > Cloud Spanner uses a SQL dialect which matches the ANSI SQL:2011 standard with some extensions for Spanner-specific features. This is a SQL standard simpler than that used in non-distributed databases such as vanilla MySQL, but still supports the relational model (e.g. JOINs). It includes data-definitio…

Just to be clear, the JOINS were removed for the vertical sharding prior to looking at Cloud Spanner. Cloud Spanner fully supports complex JOINS of many times (e.g. INNER, OUTER) Details - https://cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/query-syntax#join-type... Disclaimer: I work on Cloud Spanner

Sorry for the confusion but I meant the DML portion.

Re: Introducing Cloud Spanner, a Global Database Service

#70

Post by AsyncAwait »

karlding wrote: post #47

I wonder how this will affect adoption of CockroachDB [1], which was inspired by Spanner and supposedly an open source equivalent. I'd imagine that Spanner is a rather compelling choice, since they don't have to host it themselves. As far as I know, CockroachDB currently does not support providing CockroachDB as a service (but it is on their roadmap) [2]. [1] https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/frequently-asked-questi…

CockroachDB can be hosted on any cloud for a fraction of the cost, I'd think that's a huge advantage for small/solo startups.
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