11–20 of 139 posts
Open source, serverless, developer experience, really going for SEO with this blog. But it doesn't say anything about what the product does or that it's MySQL compatible. Don't waste your time reading it.
If you don't know what PlanetScale is, it is a serverless database offering. It is compatible with MySQL and offers lots of tooling on top of it. More here: https://docs.planetscale.com/ When I looked at it a few months ago, it had some limitations (lack of referential integrity, MySQL version compatibility) but I'm not sure if they've been addressed (or, in some cases, if they are possible to address). Anyway, alway…
So does this share MySQL’s weaknesses? As someone that used MySQL for over a decade before seeing the light and switching to Postgres, I’d be more reassured if this wasn’t compatible with any existing RDBMS than with it being MySQL compatible.
Can anyone who has tried Planetscale and compared it to other managed database solutions tell me about their experience?
I am having trouble understanding what a "Serveless Database" is. When I do a search of the term, I get hype, not a definition. For example: "What is Serverless Database? Serverless Database is a prerequisite for Serverless Computing. These are specially designed for the workloads which are unpredictable and can change rapidly. What’s more? This allows you to pay only for the database resources you use, on a second-b…
“Pay for only what you use” database.
I am having trouble understanding what a "Serveless Database" is. When I do a search of the term, I get hype, not a definition. For example: "What is Serverless Database? Serverless Database is a prerequisite for Serverless Computing. These are specially designed for the workloads which are unpredictable and can change rapidly. What’s more? This allows you to pay only for the database resources you use, on a second-b…
I am having trouble understanding what a "Serveless Database" is. When I do a search of the term, I get hype, not a definition. For example: "What is Serverless Database? Serverless Database is a prerequisite for Serverless Computing. These are specially designed for the workloads which are unpredictable and can change rapidly. What’s more? This allows you to pay only for the database resources you use, on a second-b…
“Pay for only what you use” database.
If I understand it correctly, let's say my DB is only being used to process 1M transactions from 9am-1pm, I'm basically only paying for the load during that time, versus a managed DB where it's being paid to be on 24/7. With most serverless there is a penalty though - cold startup.
So is it purely an economic play for esoteric DB workloads? If my DB is realistically going to be churning for 24/7 anyway, why would I ever use serverless DBs?
I am having trouble understanding what a "Serveless Database" is. When I do a search of the term, I get hype, not a definition. For example: "What is Serverless Database? Serverless Database is a prerequisite for Serverless Computing. These are specially designed for the workloads which are unpredictable and can change rapidly. What’s more? This allows you to pay only for the database resources you use, on a second-b…
I am having trouble understanding what a "Serveless Database" is. When I do a search of the term, I get hype, not a definition. For example: "What is Serverless Database? Serverless Database is a prerequisite for Serverless Computing. These are specially designed for the workloads which are unpredictable and can change rapidly. What’s more? This allows you to pay only for the database resources you use, on a second-b…
However, roughly speaking, "serverless" rolls together 3 features:
1. Fine grained pay-per-use (e.g. pay for a query by the number of rows scanned)
2. The pricing dial goes down to zero when usage is small enough.
3. You generally don't control VM/instance-level scaling but something closer to the abstraction level of the product being claimed as "serverless". For example in planetscale you get no control over how many mysql instances actually run your queries. This is great for reducing operational complexity but not so great for controlling performance. Performance tends to be quite opaque -- for example there's nothing I can find in Planetscale's docs about latency and throughput. The operational benefits are real, though. It's a tradeoff.
If you don't know what PlanetScale is, it is a serverless database offering. It is compatible with MySQL and offers lots of tooling on top of it. More here: https://docs.planetscale.com/ When I looked at it a few months ago, it had some limitations (lack of referential integrity, MySQL version compatibility) but I'm not sure if they've been addressed (or, in some cases, if they are possible to address). Anyway, alway…
The referential integrity piece (otherwise known as Foreign Keys) will not be addressed and is a limitation - some might say feature - of Vitess. They wrote a pretty good piece about it here, https://docs.planetscale.com/tutorials/operating-without-for...
To me, this means that planetscale (and vitess) immediately become less useful for a large class of applications: existing apps that use an RDBMS that you want to scale. Because most existing apps will expect FKs. I haven't tested my employer's application (which has FKs) to see what will happen, but I doubt it will be smooth sailing.
But there's probably plenty of greenfield development where teams would prefer to stick with standards like SQL rather than a proprietary noSQL language, and that seems like a great fit for this solution.