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CockroachDB 1.0

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#91
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might find our post[1] on atomic clocks, rather having to do without them, partially interesting. [1]: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/living-without-atomic-clo...

Hey guys, I'm a fellow developer of distributed systems here. First of all I think what you are doing is great. My question is what's the point of clocks at all? The current time is a very subjective matter and I'm sure you know this, the only real time is at the point when the cluster receives the request to commit. Anything else should be considered hearsay. Specifically the time source of any client is totally mea…

Hmm, I'm not sure I completely understand your question or your source of confusion here but unless I'm grossly misunderstanding what you're stating I think we might be conflating a couple of different subjects here. I'm happy to discuss this further over e-mail (up on my profile now) to clear up any doubts on the matter (to the best of my limited knowledge).

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#92
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might find our post[1] on atomic clocks, rather having to do without them, partially interesting. [1]: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/living-without-atomic-clo...

Hey guys, I'm a fellow developer of distributed systems here. First of all I think what you are doing is great. My question is what's the point of clocks at all? The current time is a very subjective matter and I'm sure you know this, the only real time is at the point when the cluster receives the request to commit. Anything else should be considered hearsay. Specifically the time source of any client is totally mea…

[deleted]

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#93
post #54
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I suggested "RoachDB" a while back. Which sounds more pleasant. There was a github issue for this as well.

Was about to suggest that before I saw your comment. It’s like that PostgreSQL vs Postgres naming fiasco all over again. It’s not even the association, which I actually think is great, the name is simply a mouthful. RoachDB rolls off the tongue just so much better.

Yeah .. "SQL" in product name is just lame. Its a culture, I always omit SQL from Postgres.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#94
It looks like there is still no mechanism for change notification, which in our particular case is the only missing feature that prevents using it as a postgresql replacement.

Does anybody know if this feature is planned in the short or medium term ?

https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues/6130 https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues/9712

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#95

It probably scales but how is the performance? If I need to load a couple billion rows and do a dozen joins in some analytics, is that one machine, a dozen, or 100? Is it more for web apps, analytics, or what? When would I consider switching from e.g. Postgres to CockroachDB?

[Cockroach Labs engineer here]

For just a couple billion rows and a dozen joins, a single node will suffice (with the caveat that you really want at least 3 nodes because CockroachDB is built for replication and fault-tolerance and you're not getting that with a single node cluster), but you'll get linear speedup as you add more machines.

Your performance on a single node should be on the same order of magnitude as doing this in Postgres right now. We are rapidly closing that gap, and intend to close it completely for TPC-H style queries, while retaining the linear performance speedup with more nodes.

The reason this gap isn't already closed is we've been focused on transactional performance in distributed, fault-tolerant situations rather than analytics performance, for 1.0. There are lots of optimization low hanging fruit that we haven't focused on in analytics scenarios that we are just getting started on.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#96

Cue the comments stating that no one will use this because the name is bad.

I think it's one of the worst names I've ever heard. Both because of the bug, but also because of the first syllable. That's not going to stop me from using it if I have to, but I'm certainly less interested in trying it out. And I would be embarrassed to put "Cockroach Expert" on my resume.] Disclaimer: I've come up with my fair share of bad names. SCM Breeze [1] makes me cringe now. [1] https://github.com/scmbreeze…

> I think it's one of the worst names I've ever heard. Both because of the bug, but also because of the first syllable.

You sound like you would get offended by a slight breeze of air.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#97

Does this work theoretically interplanetary (just asking because for science) ?

No. Once your latency goes beyond single digit seconds, performance will probably collapse. Too many subsystems would time out. in theory it could be made to work (with terrible performance, and extremely long commit-waits due to having to wait until the remote planets get back to you), but I wouldn't architect a planetary spanning distributed database this way. We probably would have to go back to the drawing board…

Thanks for the long answer. Much appreciated. The question came into my mind when reading some of graphics and specifications.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#99
post #94

It looks like there is still no mechanism for change notification, which in our particular case is the only missing feature that prevents using it as a postgresql replacement. Does anybody know if this feature is planned in the short or medium term ? https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues/6130 https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues/9712

This feature is planned, but I cannot give you a concrete timeline. We want to do this right, and we need other parts in place to do this with high performance, in a transactionally consistent fashion, in the face of high contention, and for arbitrarily complicated "views".

I will say that this is the single feature that I personally am most invested in at the company, so it will happen.

Re: CockroachDB 1.0

#100

I think the name "Cockroach" was a really poor decision from a marketing standpoint. The team intended to convey durability, since cockroaches can live through anything. But when I think of a cockroach, I think, gross, disgusting, etc.

If you make technology stack decisions based on your feelings rather than what the product actually does, then you shouldn't be employed as a decision-maker.
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