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Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

#2

Post by A1aM0 »

Pavlo is right to be skeptical about MCP security. The entire philosophy of MCP seems to be about maximizing context availability for the model, which stands in direct opposition to the principle of Least Privilege.

When you expose a database via a protocol designed for 'context', you aren't just exposing data; you're exposing the schema's complexity to an entity that handles ambiguity poorly. It feels like we're just reinventing SQL injection, but this time the injection comes from the system's own hallucinations rather than a malicious user.

Re: Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

#4

Post by danielfalbo »

Maybe off-topic but,

If you're not familiar with the CMU DB Group you might want to check out their eccentric teaching style [1].

I absolutely love their gangsta intros like [2] and pre-lecture dj sets like [3].

I also remember a video where he was lecturing with someone sleeping on the floor in the background for some reason. I can't find that video right now.

Not too sure about the context or Andy's biography, I'll research that later, I'm even more curious now.

[1] https://youtube.com/results?search_query=cmu+database

[2] https://youtu.be/dSxV5Sob5V8

[3] https://youtu.be/7NPIENPr-zk?t=85

Re: Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

#5

Post by Miyamura80 »

A1aM0 wrote: post #2

Pavlo is right to be skeptical about MCP security. The entire philosophy of MCP seems to be about maximizing context availability for the model, which stands in direct opposition to the principle of Least Privilege. When you expose a database via a protocol designed for 'context', you aren't just exposing data; you're exposing the schema's complexity to an entity that handles ambiguity poorly. It feels like we're jus…

Totally agree, unfettered access to databases are dangerous

There are ways to reduce injection risk since LLMs are stateless and thus you can monitor the origination and the trustworthiness of the context that enters the LLM and then decide if MCB actions that affect state will be dangerous or not

We've implementeda mechanism like this based on Simon Willison's lethal trifecta framework as an MCP gateway monitoring what enters context. LMK if you have any feedback on this approach to MCP security. This is not as elegant as the approach that Pavlo talks about in the post, but nonetheless, we believe this is a good band-aid solution for the time bein,g as the technology matures

https://github.com/Edison-Watch/open-edison

Re: Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

#9

Post by TekMol »

From my perspective on databases, two trends continued in 2025:

1: Moving everything to SQLite

2: Using mostly JSON fields

Both started already a few years back and accelerated in 2025.

SQLite is just so nice and easy to deal with, with its no-daemon, one-file-per-db and one-type-per value approach.

And the JSON arrow functions make it a pleasure to work with flexible JSON data.

Re: Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

#10

Post by delaminator »

TekMol wrote: post #9

From my perspective on databases, two trends continued in 2025: 1: Moving everything to SQLite 2: Using mostly JSON fields Both started already a few years back and accelerated in 2025. SQLite is just so nice and easy to deal with, with its no-daemon, one-file-per-db and one-type-per value approach. And the JSON arrow functions make it a pleasure to work with flexible JSON data.

From my perspective, everything's DuckDB.

Single file per database, Multiple ingestion formats, full text search, S3 support, Parquet file support, columnar storage. fully typed.

WASM version for full SQL in JavaScript.

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