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RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

rethinkdb.com

131–140 of 247 posts

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#131

Are there plans for an Arc driver?

PG said he'd post facto reject us from YC if we don't.

In all seriousness while we'd eventually like to have support for every language Arc is farther down our list than others such as PHP and Java. We will get to it eventually though.

If Arc could be made to use protocol buffers it wouldn't be too hard for a contributor to write the driver themselves though.

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#132
Thought I'll share this with you.

A yc company hired me. I showed up at their mountain view office. The founder said "This is the former office of RethinkDB! I hope we are as successful as them."

I didn't know who/what RethinkDB was, so I said ok, sure.

3 days later he asked me to clear my desk and leave. He said "You are the sort of person who should work in RethinkDB".

So I asked "What does that mean ?"

He said "RethinkDB is trying to solve very deep algorithm problems. They want somebody with CS knowledge to do deep research. That is what you are good at. But here we are just trying to run a business. You are not a good fit for that!".

So I left.

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is RethinkDB written in Lisp?

No according the website it is written in C++.

And yet the Clojure guy did his distributed DB in Clojure (aka, Lisp).

Kind of makes me wonder why C++ was chosen...

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#134
I find JSON-oriented databases to be a huge limitation for writing applications managing any kind of financial data, due to the lack of a decimal number type and a timestamp/date type, both of which SQL provides (and are used A LOT).

Sure, you can put that stuff in strings, but then you'll run into limitation with queries where you want to, e.g., aggregate a total, or do timestamp arithmetic.

I could do everything with strings, custom map-reduce, etc., if you're inclined to suggest that as a workaround. Still doesn't mean JSON's a good idea.

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#135
post #132

Thought I'll share this with you. A yc company hired me. I showed up at their mountain view office. The founder said "This is the former office of RethinkDB! I hope we are as successful as them." I didn't know who/what RethinkDB was, so I said ok, sure. 3 days later he asked me to clear my desk and leave. He said "You are the sort of person who should work in RethinkDB". So I asked "What does that mean ?" He said "Re…

I know lots of engineers who have trouble talking to people who don't share their knowledge. This problem is extremely pervasive - I'd say a good 25% or more have this problem to some extent. It's not a good thing when this happens - you need to be able to speak to laymen or you're gonna have a bad time.

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest you try to work on being a bit more practical. Don't complicate things for the sake of solving difficult problems. Don't try to shower people with your engineering knowledge when it's not necessary, and don't expect everyone to know everything you do. And don't be an asshole about it either.

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#136
What is the business model, if any? (This question is not addressed in the FAQ, and I believe has at least some relevance to the longevity/shape of the reDB community over time.)

Also, have you talked to the Meteor folks about swapping Mongo out for this? Or would this be 'newness overload'?

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#137

I find JSON-oriented databases to be a huge limitation for writing applications managing any kind of financial data, due to the lack of a decimal number type and a timestamp/date type, both of which SQL provides (and are used A LOT). Sure, you can put that stuff in strings, but then you'll run into limitation with queries where you want to, e.g., aggregate a total, or do timestamp arithmetic. I could do everything wi…

Or you could use fixed point math: 600 in database means $6.00 Then aggregates and comparison operators would work, but you would have to decide upfront how much precision you might ever need

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#138

I'm hoping this'll be a viable replacement for MongoDB. (Sparse/Schema-free is incredibly useful for me, as is JSON-centric modeling) jedberg already asked for a compare/contrast, but let me provide some specifics I care about that you might be able to answer. 1. Is it fair to say that thanks to MVCC, running an aggregation or map-reduce job isn't going to lock the whole damn thing up like it does on MongoDB? 2. You'…

1. Yes -- that was the main motivation for MVCC. We wanted to allow people to use rethinkdb for analytics and map/reduce on top of the realtime system without dealing with having to replicate data into something else. 2. Short answer: we favor consistency (via master/slave under the hood). It allows for much easier API, much fewer issues in production, etc. The user experience is just better. If you're ok with out of…

By the way, how safe is the JS interpreter? Can you get into trouble by running untrusted code in map/reduce queries?

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#139

I find JSON-oriented databases to be a huge limitation for writing applications managing any kind of financial data, due to the lack of a decimal number type and a timestamp/date type, both of which SQL provides (and are used A LOT). Sure, you can put that stuff in strings, but then you'll run into limitation with queries where you want to, e.g., aggregate a total, or do timestamp arithmetic. I could do everything wi…

The other thing that bothers me about all these new JSON databases is they aren't really novel anymore.

Clustered databases are essentially a solved problem, and have been for years. What's needed today are databases solving the problem that Google Spanner addresses – global consistency across distributed clusters in separate data centers. If you want a challenge in the DB world, that's where it is.

But another clustered, schema-less JSON database? Might as well open up Intro to Algorithms and run through the exercises -- it's no longer a challenge, algorithmically or otherwise.

Sorry to be a downer on this, and it does still take a strong coder to implement one, so well done on that front. :)

Re: RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years

#140
post #137

I find JSON-oriented databases to be a huge limitation for writing applications managing any kind of financial data, due to the lack of a decimal number type and a timestamp/date type, both of which SQL provides (and are used A LOT). Sure, you can put that stuff in strings, but then you'll run into limitation with queries where you want to, e.g., aggregate a total, or do timestamp arithmetic. I could do everything wi…

Or you could use fixed point math: 600 in database means $6.00 Then aggregates and comparison operators would work, but you would have to decide upfront how much precision you might ever need

That sounds good, but with only 53 bits of integer precision in JSON (51 if you move the decimal point to account for cents), there's just not enough digits for finance these days.

A similar problem exists if you use JSON numbers (aka doubles) for timestamps –- the numbers just aren't big enough to do it accurately.

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