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Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#21

Post by irfansharif »

tyingq wrote: post #17
samblr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(From the FAQs) How does the change to the BSL affect me as a CockroachDB user? It likely does not. As a CockroachDB user, you can freely use CockroachDB or embed it in your applications (irrespective of whether you ship those applications to customers or run them as a service). The only thing you cannot do is offer CockroachDB as a service without buying a license. - - - - - Cockroach is asking not to take open sour…

There was a different licensing issue around backups, where only the paid version had a reasonable way to back up and restore your data. Has that improved?

Yes, the distributed backup/restore functionality was folded into the free version in our last release. See https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/distributed-backup-restor....

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#22

Post by Rapzid »

buro9 wrote: post #2

How compatible? Can I just expect things like full text search to work? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/textsearch.html What about additional but supplied modules like ltree? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ltree.html I ask as I saw a related article https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/full-text-indexing-search... recently and damn it looks close... has anyone migrated a prod system that uses the above? Wha…

They used to have a huge caveat on the comparability page that cockroachdb only ran serializable transaction isolation. That's a huge caveat that appears to be gone from the page, but I don't believe gone from the solution. The default postgres isolation level is famously READ COMMITTED.

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#23

Post by mikeyjk »

latch wrote: post #12
buro9 wrote: post #2

How compatible? Can I just expect things like full text search to work? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/textsearch.html What about additional but supplied modules like ltree? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ltree.html I ask as I saw a related article https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/full-text-indexing-search... recently and damn it looks close... has anyone migrated a prod system that uses the above? Wha…

We migrated a medium-to-large (in terms of model complexity, not rows), from PG to CR about a year ago. It went pretty smoothly, but you'll definetly run into issues. (Very happy overall, btw) Every release has improved the compatibility story at an impressive rate. The 20.2 released added partial indexes and enums, which helped close the gap in our app(though, enums don't support binary encoding yet, so might not wo…

I'd love to know why you decided to make the move if you have the energy to summarise it.

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#24

Post by bostik »

nix23 wrote: post #8
samblr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(From the FAQs) How does the change to the BSL affect me as a CockroachDB user? It likely does not. As a CockroachDB user, you can freely use CockroachDB or embed it in your applications (irrespective of whether you ship those applications to customers or run them as a service). The only thing you cannot do is offer CockroachDB as a service without buying a license. - - - - - Cockroach is asking not to take open sour…

>Cockroach is asking not to take open source and start offering it as a service. Which sounds like completely reasonable thing to do! But i just wrote "be aware of it", with that license i don't consider it "Free Software", just imagine Apache or Nginx would do that. On the other hand I'm totally fine if they want to protect themself from leeches like Amazon/Google/Oracle/IBM.

> imagine Apache or Nginx would do that.

Nginx will likely do something similar, very soon. It's not that long ago when F5 bought them, with clear plans to offer paid-only features while the core itself remains open.

Give it another 5 years and I expect nginx to propagate some of those special features to the open-source version, but with the restriction that you can't offer them as a service vendor without a specific license.

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#26

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

mauvehaus wrote: post #20

TL;DR: Because the Postgres folks have outstanding taste, even better documentation, a good community, and a compatible license. Which are all the same reasons that it's my goto database. I don't build software anymore, but the last project I worked on for money was a query engine, and the project founders were pretty open about the fact that whenever they were unclear about the behavior required by the SQL spec, the…

OT: your woodworking is amazing, always enjoyable to see someone transition to a more fulfilling line of work.

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#27

Post by radub »

latch wrote: post #12
buro9 wrote: post #2

How compatible? Can I just expect things like full text search to work? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/textsearch.html What about additional but supplied modules like ltree? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ltree.html I ask as I saw a related article https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/full-text-indexing-search... recently and damn it looks close... has anyone migrated a prod system that uses the above? Wha…

We migrated a medium-to-large (in terms of model complexity, not rows), from PG to CR about a year ago. It went pretty smoothly, but you'll definetly run into issues. (Very happy overall, btw) Every release has improved the compatibility story at an impressive rate. The 20.2 released added partial indexes and enums, which helped close the gap in our app(though, enums don't support binary encoding yet, so might not wo…

Hi, regarding number 3, I have filed https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/issues/58032. Would love to get your feedback on the proposal; does it address your need? do you have a different idea for how it would work?

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#28

Post by hordeallergy »

andy_ppp wrote: post #3
buro9 wrote: post #2

How compatible? Can I just expect things like full text search to work? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/textsearch.html What about additional but supplied modules like ltree? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ltree.html I ask as I saw a related article https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/full-text-indexing-search... recently and damn it looks close... has anyone migrated a prod system that uses the above? Wha…

Be very careful - even if things are compatible, in my experience some things do not perform as well in CockroachDB which seems a bit counter intuitive but can be very true... We had problems making date range queries fast with tiny amounts of data, for example. I would seriously consider if you need CockroachDB - if you need that level of scaling you should also consider Cassandra (or Cassandra like) solutions as th…

It's not just about (big) scalability - redundancy. Cockroach 3 node cluster is a no brainer to setup, just runs. I see cockroach as far easier to work with than Cassandra, and more easily expanded than postgres - sits very well between the two.

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#29

Post by [deleted] »

hordeallergy wrote: post #28
andy_ppp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be very careful - even if things are compatible, in my experience some things do not perform as well in CockroachDB which seems a bit counter intuitive but can be very true... We had problems making date range queries fast with tiny amounts of data, for example. I would seriously consider if you need CockroachDB - if you need that level of scaling you should also consider Cassandra (or Cassandra like) solutions as th…

It's not just about (big) scalability - redundancy. Cockroach 3 node cluster is a no brainer to setup, just runs. I see cockroach as far easier to work with than Cassandra, and more easily expanded than postgres - sits very well between the two.

[deleted]

Re: Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible

#30

Post by ensignavenger »

samblr wrote: post #7
nix23 wrote: post #4

If you want to use the CockroachDB be aware of the license: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/licensing-faqs.htm...

(From the FAQs) How does the change to the BSL affect me as a CockroachDB user? It likely does not. As a CockroachDB user, you can freely use CockroachDB or embed it in your applications (irrespective of whether you ship those applications to customers or run them as a service). The only thing you cannot do is offer CockroachDB as a service without buying a license. - - - - - Cockroach is asking not to take open sour…

I know how their license negatively impacts me, I don't need some company to tell me that "all is well". I know that thier license means that if my requirements and Coackroach Labs business model diverge, I will be unable to fork the code and build a proper open source community around it. I know that I will (likely) never be able to buy a managed coackroach DB service from any vendor other than CoakroachLabs, no matter who acquires them or how badly they manage their service or how well their managed service and term offerings match what I need. I know that no matter how much I may want to pool resources with some one else to build features I need or fix bugs that I need fixed, I only have on viable option and that is to go through Cockroach, because there is no way to create a viable community fork of the project.

Them pretending that their use of the BSL doesn't impact end users and end-user freedom is marketing department BS.

They are free to license the software they develop under whatever license they want. I appreciate their past and future open source contributions and the technical achievements they have made, but their use of the BSL license rather than an open source license makes their product highly undesirable in my business.

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