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Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

briananglin.me

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Re: Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

#51

Post by smoldesu »

Nextgrid wrote: post #33
andybak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better than targetted ads built on intrusive tracking that also enables several other abusive business practices. It's not better than "good old fashioned ads". Heck I'd even be ok with targeted ads if it could be done without the rest of the "destroy civil society" that seems to come along for the ride.

Even if you solve the privacy problem, there's still a problem with advertising which is that it's inherently at odds with the user's interests. An advertising-funded product will always prioritize engagement - they want you to "engage" with the product even if it means degrading the experience intentionally such as making a process manual or take more steps than necessary (so that you are exposed to more ads). The "…

Paid products can still do all the same datamining that advertisers do, and there are markets for buying/selling that info (eg. Palantir). The truth is that all forms of monetization are inherently at-odds with the user's interests. Paying for an app doesn't magically make this friction go away, and it certainly doesn't reduce the incentive for developers to abuse your trust.

Re: Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

#52

Post by cerved »

xupybd wrote: post #10

No foreign keys to make migrations easier. That doesn't sound like the best trade off to me. Having the database constrained as much as possible makes maintenance so much easier. Many bugs don't escape into production as they're caught by the database constraints. Those that do get out do less damage to the data. I know scale comes with trade offs but that seems extreme to me.

oh no, foreign keys are useless because it's the apps responsibility to delete

/s

Re: Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

#54

Post by radu_floricica »

I'm just leaving this here:

https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax161/configura...

Draw that nice red slide all the way to the right. No, it's not storage. Yeah, it's actually affordable. Yeah, that was a sexual sound you just made.

You do have to be prepared to know some basic sysadmin, or pay somebody to do it for you. My newest server has about 60 cores and half a tera of ram. Surprisingly, it's not uber sharp - I went with high core count so individual queries actually got slower for about 20%. But that load... you can't even tell if the cpu load gauge is working. I can't wait to fill it up :D Maybe this black friday season I'll get it to 10%.

Re: Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

#55

Post by brasetvik »

anglinb wrote: post #25
samlambert wrote: post #16

This is definitely a lesson in the importance of indexes in general. We are well aware of the potential pitfalls with our current pricing. I’m happy to say we are nearly done modeling different metering rates for the product which would mean significantly lower bills for our users and avoid issues like this. It’s core to our mission that our product’s pricing is accessible and friendly to small teams. Part of being i…

Thanks Sam! As mentioned in the post, the PlantScale team was quick to credit our account for the overages and help us figure out what was going on. I'm personally super bullish on PlanetScale! With any new product there will be tradeoffs and rough edges but the positives, like easy migrations and database branches have definitely outweighed any difficulties.

Kudos for being open about your mistakes.

Could you share a little bit about what your thought process was in general when picking a database technology?

You call out "easy migrations and database branches" outweighing other quirks, so some pros and cons weighing must've happened :)

Is it easy, for example, to test things in your dev environment with realistic amounts of data, and to get an understanding of how the queries will execute, etc? These seem somewhat basic, and would've probably caught this (also kinda basic, sorry :) problem early. (As in discovering "why is this query that should be a few ms with an index lookup taking so long?" early on)

Re: Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

#56

Post by Nextgrid »

smoldesu wrote: post #51
Nextgrid wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you solve the privacy problem, there's still a problem with advertising which is that it's inherently at odds with the user's interests. An advertising-funded product will always prioritize engagement - they want you to "engage" with the product even if it means degrading the experience intentionally such as making a process manual or take more steps than necessary (so that you are exposed to more ads). The "…

Paid products can still do all the same datamining that advertisers do, and there are markets for buying/selling that info (eg. Palantir). The truth is that all forms of monetization are inherently at-odds with the user's interests. Paying for an app doesn't magically make this friction go away, and it certainly doesn't reduce the incentive for developers to abuse your trust.

> there are markets for buying/selling that info (eg. Palantir)

A major reason for these markets is that the information can be used for advertising or marketing targeting. In a world where the majority of products/services are paid and the amount of advertising is significantly reduced there will be much less demand for this information, leading to lower prices and even lower payoff from selling this information, not to mention potential legal risks (GDPR, CCPA, etc).

Re: Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

#58

Post by Nextgrid »

xupybd wrote: post #50
Grimm1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which really is a head scratcher. You'd figure especially as a startup seeing a 5k oopsie isn't really as acceptable. Mistakes do happen and I don't mean any shade to this particular person (they'll never make this mistake again) but as an industry the aggregate consequence of this is you have a lot of waste and stupid choices that then have to be cleaned up when more knowledgeable (read highly paid) people are intro…

The best technical people aren't always the best to start a business. The goal is to make money not have perfect code.

If someone comes to me and tries to sell me a service that can leave me with an infinite bill I'd look at them funny and walk away. But that's just me and maybe I just don't get it and I'm not "startuping" right.

Re: Spending $5k to learn how database indexes work

#59

Post by Buttons840 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #42
Grimm1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which really is a head scratcher. You'd figure especially as a startup seeing a 5k oopsie isn't really as acceptable. Mistakes do happen and I don't mean any shade to this particular person (they'll never make this mistake again) but as an industry the aggregate consequence of this is you have a lot of waste and stupid choices that then have to be cleaned up when more knowledgeable (read highly paid) people are intro…

I have no problems with a developer doing a 5k oopsie with things like card processing or an area that has a legitimate potential for direct monetary losses (such as payment processing where a bug could allow customers to order goods without actually paying). I have a problem with whoever looked at and said "nah, let's go with a cloud-based solution that charges per-query and gives us an essentially infinite financia…

It's not so clear cut. What's the cost of losing the entire on-prem database? Do you trust a company who hired a developer who didn't know about indexes to hire a rock solid DBA? And how much does that DBA cost?
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