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Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

docs.microsoft.com

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Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#91
post #74

One of the best parts of the perf SLA is we did it with all Data Encrypted at Rest. I'm biased. I lead security for CosmosDB.

Why is encryption at rest difficult? I presume it's all AES (hardware accelerated), with some key derived at system boot time?

Are y'all doing encryption in the D/C, or just on the WAN? If you're doing it on the WAN, any luck using MACSEC?

Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#93
post #86
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does support search through SQL like queries. You can use existing functions or implement new ones in Javascript. If you want free text search, you would be disappointed, but otherwise it is pretty decent.

So half marks on search for Azure Cosmos DB. If free text search is such a hard problem then you'd think that would be even more reason to start with solving that toughest of all problems. If it's a really hard problem then it will be even harder to retrofit later into some system that is already architected and built. A light spanking for the architect. No search would have been a thorough spanking.

The good news is that you can configure all the data to be copied over to Azure Search on a regular basis and then use search capabilities provided by Azure Search. This may sound like a complicated thing to do but the functionality provided by Azure makes it ridiculously easy to configure something like this.

Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#94
post #86
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does support search through SQL like queries. You can use existing functions or implement new ones in Javascript. If you want free text search, you would be disappointed, but otherwise it is pretty decent.

So half marks on search for Azure Cosmos DB. If free text search is such a hard problem then you'd think that would be even more reason to start with solving that toughest of all problems. If it's a really hard problem then it will be even harder to retrofit later into some system that is already architected and built. A light spanking for the architect. No search would have been a thorough spanking.

Search is not hard. Microsoft are being lazy. Which is good for me. I'm building what I thought was a Elasticsearch killer. Seems it's also a DocumentDB killer. Search is first-class with Resin: https://github.com/kreeben/resin

Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#95
post #93
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So half marks on search for Azure Cosmos DB. If free text search is such a hard problem then you'd think that would be even more reason to start with solving that toughest of all problems. If it's a really hard problem then it will be even harder to retrofit later into some system that is already architected and built. A light spanking for the architect. No search would have been a thorough spanking.

The good news is that you can configure all the data to be copied over to Azure Search on a regular basis and then use search capabilities provided by Azure Search. This may sound like a complicated thing to do but the functionality provided by Azure makes it ridiculously easy to configure something like this.

Search should be a first class feature of a database not an addon. Every.Single. Time. I have ever needed to "just add on search" it has resulted in deep pain.

Nothing you say will convince me that it's just a super easy dance in the daisies to "just do X" or "just do Y" and suddenly its database search heaven.

Database application architects need to wise up that the world revolves around search - built in, not add on.

Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#96
post #13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. DocumentDB was primarily a document store. Cosmos allows you to store graphs and KV pairs as well.

I was unable to glean from a quick read of the consistency documentation, does CosmosDB support uniqueness and foreign key constraints?

Afraid not - there's no real concept of constraints with CosmosDB.

Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#97

No backup/restore?

Cosmos DB does local persistence and replication both within a region and across any number of regions.All data is durable and made highly available via replication. You dont need to take backups or restore them for ensuring durability or availability. See (1) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introductio... and (2) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introductio... . That said, if you nee…

Actually, I wish Microsoft would stop referring to replication when asked about backup. It's the modern way of saying "You probably don't need backup, because you have RAID". There's a reason Azure SQL Database has self-service point-in-time-recovery despite also having replication.

Do you see many use cases where there is no need for backup to protect against accidental deletion, overwriting, deletion by application vulnerabilities and so on?

As far as I understood the backup docs, I should contact Microsoft Support within 8 hours if any of those things happens. Is that still correct? What if we don't notice the issue until 7 days later?

Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#99
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vendor lock in is a bad example, it's not like you're going to move your infrastructure from AWS to Google every 6months. And if you do you will have many more complicated problems than vendor lock in.

You could if you just used managed postgresql or iaas.

Except Cosmos DB in no way compares to those.

Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cosmos DB does local persistence and replication both within a region and across any number of regions.All data is durable and made highly available via replication. You dont need to take backups or restore them for ensuring durability or availability. See (1) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introductio... and (2) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introductio... . That said, if you nee…

Actually, I wish Microsoft would stop referring to replication when asked about backup. It's the modern way of saying "You probably don't need backup, because you have RAID". There's a reason Azure SQL Database has self-service point-in-time-recovery despite also having replication. Do you see many use cases where there is no need for backup to protect against accidental deletion, overwriting, deletion by application…

Totally agree with you. Even if you have delayed copies, you still need proper backup in place. They recently implemented long term retention for Azure SQL backups in Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-sql-database-no... as it was only allowing 'til 35 days. I would expect that something similar is provided also for this type of DBs
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