Elasticsearch was never a database • Hacker News Board

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#51

Post by bigfatkitten » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

victor106 wrote: post #31

speedgoose wrote: post #11

Accenture managed to build a data platform for my company with Elasticsearch as the primary database. I raised concerns early during the process but their software architect told me they never had any issues. I assume he didn’t lie. I was only an user so I didn’t fight and decided to not make my work rely on their work.

> Accenture They messed up a $30 million dollar project big time at a previous company. My cto swore to never recommend them

How are they still in business?

I’ve either been involved with or adjacent to dozens of Accenture projects at 5 companies over the last 20 years, and not a single one had a satisfactory outcome.

I’ve never heard a single story of “Accenture came in, and we got what we wanted, on time and on budget.” Cases of “we got a minimum viable solution for $100m instead of $30m, and it was four years late” seem more typical.

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#52

Post by immibis » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #48

No, of course not. But the question is, do you need a database? A database is a big proposition: transactions, indexes, query processing, replication, distribution, etc. A fair number of use cases are just "Take this data and give it back to me when I ask for it". ES (or any other not-a-database) might not be a full-bore DBMS. But it might be what you need.

Rule of thumb: Whenever you think you don't need relational database features, you will later discover why you do.

The one thing relational databases don't have, that you might need, is scaling. Maintaining data consistency implies a certain level of non-concurrency. Conversely, maintaining perfect concurrency implies a certain level of data inconsistency.

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#53

Post by all2 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #20

roywiggins wrote: post #10

> Elastic has been working on this gap. The more recent ES|QL introduces a similar feature called lookup joins, and Elastic SQL provides a more familiar syntax (with no joins). But these are still bound by Lucene’s underlying index model. On top of that, developers now face a confusing sprawl of overlapping query syntaxes (currently: Query DSL, ES|QL, SQL, EQL, KQL), each suited to different use cases, and with diffe…

... and then becomes an email client ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski%27s_La... ). A two-fer. lol.

It seems like everything converges on either LISP or emacs.

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#54

Post by wwarner » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

These drawbacks are all true, but sometimes storing directly to elastic is still the best way forward.

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#55

Post by virgil_disgr4ce » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

wasting_time wrote: post #50

esafak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICYMI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule

ICYMI expands to "in case you missed it", ICYMI.

ICYMI expands to ... wait, shit

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#56

Post by rpdillon » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

_joel wrote: post #27

this_user wrote: post #23

I mean, it is called "ElasticSEARCH", not "Elasticdatabase".

MySQL isn't mine either, it's Larry Ellison's.

Well, "My" is the name of the author's daughter, rather than a reference to who owns it.

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#57

Post by throw_m239339 » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

It has an index? It has data that can be queried with indexes? it is a database. PERIOD. Let's not turn the word database into a buzzword.

It should obviously NOT be a "main" database but part of an ETL pipeline for search purposes for instance.

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#58

Post by Quarrelsome » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

lvspiff wrote: post #5

Everything is a database if you believe hard enough Feel like the christmas story kid -- >simplicity, and world-class performance, get started with XXXXXXXX. A crummy commercial?

ram is a database, you just need bigger capacitors.

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#59

Post by simianwords » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

thisisananth wrote: post #41

kubi07 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a company that used elastic search as main db. It worked, company made alot of money from that project. It was a wrong decision but helped us complete the project very fast. We needed search capability and a db. ES did it both. Problems that we faced by using elastic search: High load, high Ram usage : db goes down, more ram needed. Luckily we had ES experts in infra team, helped us alot.(ecommerce compan…

agree with comment. We use ES quite extensively as a database with huge documents and touchwood we haven't had any data loss. We take hourly backups and it is simple to restore. You have to get used to eventual consistency. If you want to read after writing even by id, you have to wait for the indexing to be complete (around 1 second). You have to design the documents in such a way that you shouldn't need to join the…

good ideas but sorry i simply don't understand why i would ever do a join at read time. one of the worst ideas!

Re: Elasticsearch was never a database

#60

Post by simianwords » Fri, Jan 16, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

PedroBatista wrote: post #6

I really never understood how people could store very important information in ES like it was a database. Even if they don't understand what ES is and what a "normal" database is, I'm sure some of those people run into issues where their "db" got either corrupted of lost data even when testing and building their system around it. This is and was general knowledge at the time, it was no secret that from time to time t…

usually in companies, people have a main durable store of information that is then streamed to other databases that store a transformation of this data with some augmentation.

these new data stores don't usually require that level of durability or reliability.