Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs • Hacker News Board

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#71

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 8:45 AM UTC

truncate wrote: post #67

ForHackernews wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of arguing about semantics (and not interesting database semantics) it seems half the commenters here think "deep tech" just means "like, technology you go really super DEEP into, like really dig into that DEEP DEEP HARDCORE TECHNOLOGY" but that's not what this term has historically meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_tech > Deep tech innovations are often radical and may create new markets or disrup…

>> It's not inventing the transistor or the integrated circuit. Integrated circuit on its own isn't doing anything unless used for something. Better chips enable more use-cases, more electronics etc etc. Databases in similar way are enabling more applications for users. None of the apps or services we reliably use everyday at the scale (e.g. Google Search, Online shopping, Messaging) would not exist without solid sto…

> Integrated circuit on its own isn't doing anything unless used for something

YES! YES EXACTLY!

That's part of what makes things like ICs "deep tech" - they are transformative innovations that have no immediate application so they need government or a very well-funded far-thinking private org (e.g. Bell Labs) to bring them into being. They are not like making a new, better database.

You have just reiterated my point very concisely, so thank you.

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#72

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 9:30 AM UTC

senderista wrote: post #42

bedman12345 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which database companies have research labs? AFAIK amazon, snowflake, databricks, google and SAP don’t have a research lab dedicated to databases. They have some people that are paid to do research but there does not seem to be an IBM Almaden anywhere in the world.

There is MongoDB Labs FWIW (also Oracle Labs but I think that's just rebranded Sun Labs and not sure how much DB research happens there).

One example of what they do there is GraalVM, which started as MaximeVM at Sun Labs, although they don't share code per se only the research.

Or how Solaris eventually became the first UNIX with hardware memory tagging.

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#73

Post by jefecoon » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

Andy, you had me at KillerMike + El-P super group. Best of luck running the jewels on the dbase world with CH

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#74

Post by bhickey » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

bhickey wrote: post #62

mkw5053 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok now I need to know.

Andy was a PhD student at Brown when I was an undergrad. Once he hired a magician off of Craigslist for a departmental event. The guy showed up drunk and lost his bird in the building.

Or the time he ran BitTorrent-over-MediaWiki and made a number of people very angry.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/01e4/ecb5a12b6735dd0344d888...

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#75

Post by apavlo » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

remywang wrote: post #40

Looks like Andy's here, so if you see this - please also try to convince ClickHouse to consider funding DB research in academia. With all the money being poured into AI and the chaos in government funding, there is almost nothing for DB research anymore.

Remy - Good to hear from you. Yes things are mess right now. Let me get settled with setting up the lab and we'll figure out how we want to engage with academia.

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#76

Post by apavlo » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

HackerThemAll wrote: post #70

Andy, go ahead and correct the https://dbdb.io/db/bigquery How did you come to the conclusion that BigQuery's data model is "Document / XML" :joy: This entry is not only wrong, it's way outdated, therefore misinforming. I'm wondering about the overall quality of this dbdb.io database at large.

There are several out of date entries in there. We used to have students help with writing entries. I just did a major refresh of the site this summer. I need to go through all the entries and figure out how to update them.

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#77

Post by senderista » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #72

senderista wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is MongoDB Labs FWIW (also Oracle Labs but I think that's just rebranded Sun Labs and not sure how much DB research happens there).

One example of what they do there is GraalVM, which started as MaximeVM at Sun Labs, although they don't share code per se only the research. Or how Solaris eventually became the first UNIX with hardware memory tagging.

I see a lot of concurrency papers from Oracle Labs but not DB papers FWIW.

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#78

Post by andriy_koval » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

kirugan wrote: post #56

andriy_koval wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally built quite several specialized hyper-performant DB engines, and studied most popular OSS projects, and believe most DB questions are theoretically answered long ago(decade back). The puzzle is mostly to assemble pieces together to fit specific tradeoff of performance/simplicity/functionality and not overengineer system.

What is the best resource for finding good academic papers on databases that are actually practical to implement?

I prefer to not study databases through academic papers, I think major OSS projects(PG, Cassandra, RockDb, duckdb, ClickHouse, etc) have all/most important data structures and algorithms implemented and described way better.

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#79

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

senderista wrote: post #77

pjmlp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example of what they do there is GraalVM, which started as MaximeVM at Sun Labs, although they don't share code per se only the research. Or how Solaris eventually became the first UNIX with hardware memory tagging.

I see a lot of concurrency papers from Oracle Labs but not DB papers FWIW.

Secret sauce.

Contrary to most beliefs, there are still features on Oracle, SQL Server, DB 2, and similar, not yet available on Postgres.

Not having DB papers is certainly one way for Oracle to keep it that way.

Re: Andy Pavlo joins ClickHouse to establish ClickHouse Labs

#80

Post by truncate » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #71

truncate wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's not inventing the transistor or the integrated circuit. Integrated circuit on its own isn't doing anything unless used for something. Better chips enable more use-cases, more electronics etc etc. Databases in similar way are enabling more applications for users. None of the apps or services we reliably use everyday at the scale (e.g. Google Search, Online shopping, Messaging) would not exist without solid sto…

> Integrated circuit on its own isn't doing anything unless used for something YES! YES EXACTLY! That's part of what makes things like ICs "deep tech" - they are transformative innovations that have no immediate application so they need government or a very well-funded far-thinking private org (e.g. Bell Labs) to bring them into being. They are not like making a new, better database. You have just reiterated my point…

I don't think I did reiterate your point. You were saying unlike ICs, databases -- "But it's not creating something new that has never existed before".

The point I was making was like newer/better ICs pave way for new electronics/use-cases; so do better databases/storage software pave way for more new applications that wouldn't have existed before.