This feels like MS' version of Google's Cloud Spanner that's GA in a few days. Same kind of marketing too.
Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
51–60 of 120 posts
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#52https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/10/with-cosmos-db-microsoft-w...
Hope Cosmos team releases a whitepaper on their experiences with the language. I'd heard snatches of gossip here and there that TLA+ was used inside Cosmos, but no concrete details.
edit: apparently there's also a video of Lamport talking about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_PPKyAsR3w
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
relational model globally distributed ACID transactions 99.999 availability to name a few
Please post link where they talk about transactions - I can't find it in the docs anywhere. Availability SLA is clearly not 5 9's - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/cosmos-d...
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#54It's not that I don't appreciate the option. This seems far closer to what DocumentDB should have been earlier on. Though tbh, I think Storage Tables are already pretty useful.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/introductio...
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#55Hi, This is Dharma from Azure Cosmos DB team. We are super excited to make the service available today.We published the first of the series of technical blog posts here -> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/a-technical-overview-... . Would love to answer any Cosmos DB questions.
Can you give an overview on how Cosmos differs from Spanner and CockroachDB?
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#56Designed with TLA+! :D Small interview with Leslie Lamport: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/10/with-cosmos-db-microsoft-w... Hope Cosmos team releases a whitepaper on their experiences with the language. I'd heard snatches of gossip here and there that TLA+ was used inside Cosmos, but no concrete details. edit: apparently there's also a video of Lamport talking about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_PPKyAsR3w
> Leslie Lamport the Turing Award winner whose work underpins many of these concepts (and who also wrote the LaTeX document preparation system) and who joined Microsoft Research in 2001
Quote about TLA+:
> As Shukla noted, though, his idea here was to build a database system that could last decades. To do this, he also brought in Lamport to teach the team TLA+. Lamport has long had a special interest in how developers spec out their applications. TLA+ is essentially a formal language for doing just that. “When we started out in 2010, we wanted to build a system — a lasting system. This was the database of the future for Microsoft,” Shukla told me. “We try to apply as much rigor to our engineering as we possibly can. […] TLA+ has been wonderful in getting that level of rigor in a team of engineers to set the bar high for quality.” TLA+, Lamport noted, allows you to do the high-level design of a system in a completely formal way — and because it’s done formally, it can be checked for correctness, too (and to be fair, AWS and others also use TLA+ to spec out their distributed systems). “I don’t want to give the impression that TLA+ is great and I’m brilliant. It’s great because it’s almost entirely based on mathematics,” Lamport added.
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#57This feels like MS' version of Google's Cloud Spanner that's GA in a few days. Same kind of marketing too.
Having evaluated both, I'd say Cloud Spanner is quite a bit behind in some regards. It's not that Spanner itself can't do something but that Cloud Spanner hasn't productized some important features like multi-datacenter failovers. It's certainly coming but CosmosDB (aka. DocumentDB) does a lot of this today (and has been for awhile as this is not entirely new).
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/documentdb/documentdb...
"Azure Cosmos DB accounts that are configured to use strong consistency cannot associate more than one Azure region with their Azure Cosmos DB account."
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#58Is it open source? Why do I care? The same reason I don't use AWS or Google Cloud only datastores: I want to avoid vendor lockin.
Vendor lock in is a bad example, it's not like you're going to move your infrastructure from AWS to Google every 6months. And if you do you will have many more complicated problems than vendor lock in.
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#59Designed with TLA+! :D Small interview with Leslie Lamport: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/10/with-cosmos-db-microsoft-w... Hope Cosmos team releases a whitepaper on their experiences with the language. I'd heard snatches of gossip here and there that TLA+ was used inside Cosmos, but no concrete details. edit: apparently there's also a video of Lamport talking about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_PPKyAsR3w
Re: Azure Cosmos DB, a globally distributed database
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having evaluated both, I'd say Cloud Spanner is quite a bit behind in some regards. It's not that Spanner itself can't do something but that Cloud Spanner hasn't productized some important features like multi-datacenter failovers. It's certainly coming but CosmosDB (aka. DocumentDB) does a lot of this today (and has been for awhile as this is not entirely new).
But from Cosmos DB's doc, cross-dc strong consistency seems not even supported. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/documentdb/documentdb... "Azure Cosmos DB accounts that are configured to use strong consistency cannot associate more than one Azure region with their Azure Cosmos DB account."