Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

memsql.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 121 posts

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#101

Post by [deleted] »

dman wrote: post #92
loopp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I am a product manager at MemSQL, so I may be biased :) There are a variety of ways to try out MemSQL yourself such as installing on Linux, Windows, Mac, AWS, etc, and maybe I am biased since I was an engineer before I became a PM, but we optimize our product currently exactly for technical people such as IT, devops, and of course, engineers. For a list of installation guides, check this link out: https:/…

Some feedback - I cant appear to find any way to install on Windows on the following part of your website - https://docs.memsql.com/guides/latest/install-memsql/

[deleted]

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#102

Post by manigandham »

moocowtruck wrote: post #96
manigandham wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can install it, use it, benchmark it, and check everything yourself. It's not open-source, but there is plenty of closed-source proprietary software, and plenty of buyers who care about solving their problems and paying money to get that done (and ensure the vendor stays alive). If you don't want to use a closed-source product then that's your prerogative, but I don't see how you're making a dev/engineering decis…

because the source is important, it tells the buyer they have a future if they no longer like your services; closed source means they are locked into whatever fresh hell might come upon your company which in turn unleashes fresh hell upon their decision to buy in.. in 2018+ it's just a smart decision to make

The vast majority of companies can barely build their own products, let alone study the source code of complex 3rd-party software. A distributed SQL database is on the extreme end of knowledge required to even understand it, so I'm not sure how open-source is going to help you.

As a counter-example, rethinkdb is open-source but the company failed and nobody cares about using it anymore. What would you do with that? Start building new database features yourself? Or just get your data out and move to a different system?

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#103

Post by paulsutter »

manigandham wrote: post #102
moocowtruck wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the source is important, it tells the buyer they have a future if they no longer like your services; closed source means they are locked into whatever fresh hell might come upon your company which in turn unleashes fresh hell upon their decision to buy in.. in 2018+ it's just a smart decision to make

The vast majority of companies can barely build their own products, let alone study the source code of complex 3rd-party software. A distributed SQL database is on the extreme end of knowledge required to even understand it, so I'm not sure how open-source is going to help you. As a counter-example, rethinkdb is open-source but the company failed and nobody cares about using it anymore. What would you do with that? S…

/Widely used/ open source projects will find continued support; the user base of a project is a crucial part of the decision. Rethinkdb had only one serious site, who found it easier to port to a thin layer on top of Postgres when rethink collapsed.

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#104

Post by emmanueloga_ »

Another instance of the Wikipedia page for a product [1] being more useful than the main site to describe it:

* MemSQL is a distributed, in-memory, SQL database management system.

* It is a relational database management system (RDBMS).

* It compiles Structured Query Language (SQL) into machine code, via termed code generation.

* On April 23, 2013, MemSQL launched its first generally available version of the database to the public.

* MemSQL is wire-compatible with MySQL.

* MemSQL can store database tables either as rowstores or columnstores (The OLAP vs OLTP part I guess).

* A MemSQL database is a distributed database implemented with aggregators and leaf nodes.

* MemSQL durability is slightly different for its in-memory rowstore and an on-disk columnstore.

* A MemSQL cluster can be configured in "High Availability" mode.

* MemSQL gives users the ability to install Apache Spark as part of the MemSQL cluster, and use Spark as an ETL tool.

The main value proposition seems to be the distributed nature, which probably makes it easier to setup out of the box than, say, trying to setup a cluster MySQL or PostgreSQL databases which are not "natively distributed". Also, probably most useful when the data is "big enough" vs resources available on any single server or when reliability is very important.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MemSQL

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#105

Post by zzzcpan »

manigandham wrote: post #102
moocowtruck wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the source is important, it tells the buyer they have a future if they no longer like your services; closed source means they are locked into whatever fresh hell might come upon your company which in turn unleashes fresh hell upon their decision to buy in.. in 2018+ it's just a smart decision to make

The vast majority of companies can barely build their own products, let alone study the source code of complex 3rd-party software. A distributed SQL database is on the extreme end of knowledge required to even understand it, so I'm not sure how open-source is going to help you. As a counter-example, rethinkdb is open-source but the company failed and nobody cares about using it anymore. What would you do with that? S…

You will be able to at least maintain it, fix bugs, security issues. Maybe even start working on new features, promote your fork, revive some of the community, find people with relevant expertise, etc.

Databases are so lock-iny and critical that it's only natural for closed source database startups to be considered too risky to touch.

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#106

Post by manigandham »

zzzcpan wrote: post #105
manigandham wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of companies can barely build their own products, let alone study the source code of complex 3rd-party software. A distributed SQL database is on the extreme end of knowledge required to even understand it, so I'm not sure how open-source is going to help you. As a counter-example, rethinkdb is open-source but the company failed and nobody cares about using it anymore. What would you do with that? S…

You will be able to at least maintain it, fix bugs, security issues. Maybe even start working on new features, promote your fork, revive some of the community, find people with relevant expertise, etc. Databases are so lock-iny and critical that it's only natural for closed source database startups to be considered too risky to touch.

Possible doesn't mean realistic. As stated, 99.99% of companies are not going to come close to understanding, forking, and running their own build of a database.

It's better to practice proper vendor management and weigh all the risks and realities instead. If you're not more capitalized and viable then your vendor, then you have more important things to worry about then your vendor disappearing overnight.

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#107

Post by azifali »

manigandham wrote: post #100
jessedhillon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently was able to unfuck my way out of a 300GB data loss resulting from a failed DB upgrade. By looking into the commit history of PostgreSQL, finding the commit with the PG_CATALOG_VERSION I needed, and compiling from that revision, I was able to re-run the upgrade with the parameters I needed. I'm not sure what I would have done if that had been MS SQL Server or something else.

You would send in a support ticket to the company and they would solve it for you.

While plenty of closed source software systems are still being widely used, I think the world is dramatically moving towards open source. The world has changed and I think these expectations of being able to leverage an open source software is here to stay. This despite the fact that a vast majority may never actually read, fork or modify the source code.

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#108

Post by mmt »

manigandham wrote: post #100
jessedhillon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently was able to unfuck my way out of a 300GB data loss resulting from a failed DB upgrade. By looking into the commit history of PostgreSQL, finding the commit with the PG_CATALOG_VERSION I needed, and compiling from that revision, I was able to re-run the upgrade with the parameters I needed. I'm not sure what I would have done if that had been MS SQL Server or something else.

You would send in a support ticket to the company and they would solve it for you.

> they would solve it for you

That hasn't been my experience, at least not on any suitable time scale.

I strongly suspect that the vast majority of those of us who have worked somewhere "not more capitalized and viable" than the vendor share that experience.

Even when a vendor's support engineer is fully capable of solving the problem, the sense of urgency can't reasonably be expected to match that of a much smaller customer facing potentially catastrophic data loss (or other existential-threat-level consequences).

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#109

Post by manigandham »

mmt wrote: post #108
manigandham wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would send in a support ticket to the company and they would solve it for you.

> they would solve it for you That hasn't been my experience, at least not on any suitable time scale. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of those of us who have worked somewhere "not more capitalized and viable" than the vendor share that experience. Even when a vendor's support engineer is fully capable of solving the problem, the sense of urgency can't reasonably be expected to match that of a much smaller…

Vendors have support plans and SLAs so if you need 24/7 support then make sure that is indeed what you're paying for.

I do not see how having spare engineering talent capable of reading, editing and running a custom database build is the more realistic or faster option for any business in case of issues.

Re: MemSQL is now free to use for databases with up to 128GB of RAM usage

#110

Post by voltagex_ »

hermitdev wrote: post #87
PeterisP wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HFT can easily be 12000 transactions a minute with a requirement for each of these transactions to be very fast. It's not (necessarily) about high throughput, but about low latency.

I work for a dark pool ATS that is hit by HFT firms, and we routinely see flows greater than 12k transactions per minute. Ive been benchmarking a variety of compilers, db libs, drivers and platforms. So far, best perfomance ive gotten, single threaded, is I can write a single order to a man store table in MSQL in about 500 microsecs (that was from a .net core app running directly on the same server as MS SQL, ive bee…

MSSQL? That's fast. Are you able to give any more details about the database server / net core code?
Post reply on HN