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PlanetScale is now generally available

planetscale.com

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Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their FAQ [1] clarifies this somewhat: > Every time a query retrieves a row from the database, it is counted as a row read. Every time a row is written to the database, it is counted as a row written. [1] https://planetscale.com/pricing (FAQ at bottom of the page)

> Reads: Retrieving or inspecting rows during a query or mutation of any kind to your PlanetScale databases That's what the detailed pricing page says, which is somewhat different. The pricing is actually per row inspected, not per row returned to the client. So in aggregations you'd pay for every single row you aggregate. So I'd argue that the FAQ is actually misleading.

So does that make an accidental full table scan an expensive operation from a billing standpoint?

Like others say, the end user doesn’t have a lot of control over how the query planner does its magic. They do have control over what goes into and out of the system though.

That being said things like Google BigQuery bill by compute time and data examined so I guess that works as long as the price per “unit” is on the order of millicents or something.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#72
post #29
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that looks pretty useful. 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 develop…

There is not and will never be a solution to the problem of horizontally scaling an application and database designed jointly for a single-box ACID RDBMS. You have to compromise something to get the scaling.

> You have to compromise something to get the scaling.

And the reason why is basically “physics”. The speed of light is pretty damn slow all things considered.

Until we find ways to make all the servers in the cluster have latency measured in something like picoseconds, something is gonna have to give.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#73
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't provision and manage the infrastructure associated with your DB. Someone else does it for you and you just focus on querying/storing the data and whatever else your business requires you to do.

Not provisioning & managing is part of it, but the pricing model is important too. e.g. RDS and Mongo Atlas are managed database services so you're not provisioning and managing the infra, but you are paying for dedicated machines and their sizes, etc.

RDS still requires you to provision servers even if you aren't running them.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#74
post #44
post #30

>What’s more? This allows you to pay only for the database resources you use, on a second-by-second basis. ..." This is the biggest sham in technology offerings today. The idea that you only pay what you use is a misnomer.

How so?

No one can accurately predict what they need plus they are incentivized to use more.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#75
post #65

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…

"Serverless Database" It's just a database service. You don't run the servers. You pay someone to do that and you just connect to it and use it and someone else maintains the servers, storage, scaling, backups, patches, etc., according to some SLA and other terms. There are indeed servers somewhere. "Serverless" is misleading cloud speak for the otherwise easily understood concept of a service.

They shut down when not in use.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their FAQ [1] clarifies this somewhat: > Every time a query retrieves a row from the database, it is counted as a row read. Every time a row is written to the database, it is counted as a row written. [1] https://planetscale.com/pricing (FAQ at bottom of the page)

> Reads: Retrieving or inspecting rows during a query or mutation of any kind to your PlanetScale databases That's what the detailed pricing page says, which is somewhat different. The pricing is actually per row inspected, not per row returned to the client. So in aggregations you'd pay for every single row you aggregate. So I'd argue that the FAQ is actually misleading.

Oof. Well that's not good.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#77
post #22

"built on top of the only open source database proven at hyper scale, Vitess." Vitess is a sharding layer. Furthermore, I'm sure Cassandra (for all it's flaws) would beg to differ, Netflix had a huge C* deployment. Is hyperscale larger than webscale? Hmm...

>Is hyperscale larger than webscale?

I am sure Youtube is larger than Netflix, by many order of magnitude.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#78
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does MySQL (or PlanetScale) provide a way to input a query and get a lower/upper bound on the number of rows the query will "inspect" when run?

MySQL’s “explain ” does exactly what you described and better. It shows indexes used, exact number of rows scanned etc. It’s the first thing I do when I suspect a query taking time. It’s a pity that not too many backend engineers know about it now a days.

> exact number of rows scanned etc

I'm reading MySQL docs [1] and I can't figure out which value in the example output corresponds to the "exact number of rows scanned".

> It’s a pity that not too many backend engineers know about it now a days.

I use EXPLAIN with PostgreSQL when needed but mostly focus on the execution time, not the number of rows scanned (reading a large row could be orders of magnitude slower than reading a row in a JOIN table of two integers in a row based storage engine).

[1] https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/explain.html

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#79

I still don't understand how you can work safely with this kind of pricing model. You pay $1.50 per 10 million rows inspected by the database. A relational database like MySQL has a query planner, so you're not fully in control over how exactly the database accesses your data. How many rows are read not only depends on your specific SQL query but also on the contents of the tables you read and the parameters supplied…

This is sort of wait nails people with DynamoDB pricing. If you mess up your query, you end up scanning through tons of data, racking up the cost.

Re: PlanetScale is now generally available

#80

I'm skeptical that YouTube would be using this for anything remotely significant given Google's strong propensity to only use internal technologies that they fully control.

I doubt YouTube is using the cloud service. If they're not 100% on Google's services by now, they still use Vitess. Vitess is the open source project PlanetScale manages which lets you horizontally scale MySQL databases.
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