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Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

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Re: Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

#21

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

dkhenry wrote: post #18
Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #17

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of a database company (FoundationDB) building a scalable, ACID database. I couldn't agree more with main quote that they pulled from the paper, expressing the difficulty of (even great) programmers having to "code around the lack of transactions." Ease of development is one of the biggest benefits of transactions. However, another huge benefit that didn't get much play in the article is t…

I wonder how you see the publishing of the Spanner paper effects your product? Does this give validity to your product seeing as there is a production system with similar features to yours already in use, or is there a risk Google might provide this system as a service to other companies possibly competing with you.

Well, it doesn't seem like it's their ambition, but there's no doubt that if Google released all of their in-house data tools, including Spanner, that it would drastically change the market.

We love to see this stuff, though. When we started building our product over three years ago, the idea of a distributed, ACID database was sort of laughed at. (I think the CAP theorem scared a lot of people off from building really useful products.) FoundationDB isn't the same as Spanner, but they share some of the same goals. We see that as a huge validation.

Thanks for the question.

Re: Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

#23

Post by jbigelow76 »

nolok wrote: post #2

NewSQL ? Seriously ? Do we really need another low-quality buzzword for people to re-use everywhere ?

I didn't really like the NewSQL thing either. I initially thought it must have meant transactional DBs with some first class schema-less features like Postgres has. Nope, it's another one of those phrases or ideas that ReadWriteWeb, the source of the linked to NewSQL definition, is trying to turn into a "big idea". They tried that previously with the Internet of Things (still don't know what the hell that is) as well as their own name, when they referred to the Web 2.0/API hype as the Read/Write Web.

I actually like RWW over TC or Mashable but sometimes I have to tune out some of their pompous prognostication.

Re: Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

#24

Post by neilk »

sigil wrote: post #15

Buzzword headline aside, the Spanner paper is great and worth your time. As is the BigTable paper, the Dremel paper, and the Paxos Made Live paper. I read the Google whitepapers and wonder, is there anywhere else one can go to work on real solutions to distributed systems problems? At smaller scales you can cheat -- you don't need Paxos, you can get away with non-consensus-based master / slave failover. You can play…

Lots of big sites roll their own solutions for this problem. Often there will even be multiple in-house technologies with different characteristics. Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook for sure.

Re: Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

#26

Post by seiji »

neilk wrote: post #20
nostrademons wrote: post #14

It's really funny to watch tech journalists try to write about Google infrastructure from the outside, based only on one paper... Hell, it's usually really funny just to watch tech journalists try to write.

The part that amuses me is their surprise that Google sees some advantage to transactions. Journalists (of any kind) want to see things in terms of personality or philosophical conflict, e.g. SQL vs NoSQL. Because it's what their readers understand, and usually, it's all that they understand. They don't seem to consider that people might be making rational choices and difficult tradeoffs.

If that site contains one journalist, I'll eat my diamond tiara. Let's call them blogophiles instead. Or reposting aggragists. Adveraggrapostsummarizers. "One who reposts content from other sites while attaching ads and providing a veneer of quote-unquote insight."

Re: Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

#28

Post by w1ntermute »

nostrademons wrote: post #14

It's really funny to watch tech journalists try to write about Google infrastructure from the outside, based only on one paper... Hell, it's usually really funny just to watch tech journalists try to write.

I don't think it's fair to lump all technology journalists into one category. There are two basic types of technology journalists - technologists who write about technology and journalists who write about technology. The former tends to be more accurate, but the latter tend to be more savvy, and thus successful, journalists, since most readers are not technologists.

Re: Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

#29

Post by equark »

sigil wrote: post #15

Buzzword headline aside, the Spanner paper is great and worth your time. As is the BigTable paper, the Dremel paper, and the Paxos Made Live paper. I read the Google whitepapers and wonder, is there anywhere else one can go to work on real solutions to distributed systems problems? At smaller scales you can cheat -- you don't need Paxos, you can get away with non-consensus-based master / slave failover. You can play…

You could come work at Sense (http://www.senseplatform.com) or email me tristan@senseplatform.com. Not Google scale, but the same technological challenges without the legacy bagage.

Re: Google Spanner's Most Surprising Revelation: NoSQL is Out and NewSQL is In

#30

Post by rbanffy »

Dave_Rosenthal wrote: post #17

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of a database company (FoundationDB) building a scalable, ACID database. I couldn't agree more with main quote that they pulled from the paper, expressing the difficulty of (even great) programmers having to "code around the lack of transactions." Ease of development is one of the biggest benefits of transactions. However, another huge benefit that didn't get much play in the article is t…

I don't think what defines NoSQL is the lack of transactions. In fact, lack of transactions is not even a common trait among all things called NoSQL.

To be absolutely sincere, I think we should get rid of the word NoSQL. As for NewSQL, we shouldn't have started using it. It's great for branding, but it confuses journalists.

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