Amazon Quantum Ledger Database • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#61

Post by snissn » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

silentsea90 wrote: post #55

Newbie here. Questions: 1) Can somebody go over use cases and target customers, where one would prefer this over more traditional DBs. 2) Since this is centralized, it is in theory possible to go back to a previous state of the ledger. Is that blocked simply because the product doesn't support rolling back to a previous state?

> build ecommerce site

> have an inventory list and supply chain

> want good audits of what happened when built into your database

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#62

Post by tsuru » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

Am I right in believing this looks like a competitor to Datomic?

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#63

Post by politician » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

NathanKP wrote: post #42

cheeze wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS-Exclusive from my understanding. Not in AWS but from reading other comments, it sounds like this has been widely used internally for some time.

Correct QLDB has been widely used within AWS: https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1067836869021327361 https://twitter.com/colmmacc/status/1067832198059970561

Do you know if the QLDB write API is more like an event store or more like a relational database? It sounds like the read API provides both models (read the journal, or read the snapshot).

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#64

Post by jonhohle » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

NathanKP wrote: post #42

cheeze wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS-Exclusive from my understanding. Not in AWS but from reading other comments, it sounds like this has been widely used internally for some time.

Correct QLDB has been widely used within AWS: https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1067836869021327361 https://twitter.com/colmmacc/status/1067832198059970561

I was at Amazon during early development and watched several of the PoA talks about it. On the one hand, the concept is surprisingly simple, on the other hand, it's such a useful general purpose concept that it's surprising it wasn't done earlier. I believe it's first public use case was Database Migration Service. It's neat to see it offered as it's own product.

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#65

Post by mr_tristan » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

jadiofan wrote: post #45

I wonder if this is just based on Kafka with some native tamper-proof functionality added to it?

I had a similar thought - this is probably built on Kinesis or Kafka with additional crypto layer

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#66

Post by philjohn » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

Cieplak wrote: post #58

Is it possible to comply with GDPR while using this to store data? Given that it operates like an append-only log, is it possible to actually remove data to comply with a GDPR request?

Seeing as it's immutable, it would appear not.

Which is why you use it for specialised use cases and keep any PII out of there.

It would be possible to replay into a new ledger, filtering out the pieces of data to be deleted, but that goes against having an immutable log in the first place.

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#67

Post by riffraff » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

Cieplak wrote: post #58

Is it possible to comply with GDPR while using this to store data? Given that it operates like an append-only log, is it possible to actually remove data to comply with a GDPR request?

you probably would want to store the reserved data in a separate store, and just reference them from the immutable one.

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#68

Post by dangoor » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

Cieplak wrote: post #58

Is it possible to comply with GDPR while using this to store data? Given that it operates like an append-only log, is it possible to actually remove data to comply with a GDPR request?

You can use cryptoshredding: have an encryption key for each user (stored outside of this ledger) and encrypt all PII with that key. Throw away the key if the user wants you to delete their data.

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#69

Post by cjblomqvist » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

Cieplak wrote: post #58

Is it possible to comply with GDPR while using this to store data? Given that it operates like an append-only log, is it possible to actually remove data to comply with a GDPR request?

By not storing that type of data. It's you need to store that type of data you can also anonymize or turn into keys where you keep the answers in a separate (mutable) database.

Also, for some purposes (legal) you are allowed to store the data regardless because you have to for other reasons.

Re: Amazon Quantum Ledger Database

#70

Post by znpy » Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

Uhm... If some of my data is stored in one instance of that database and I then ask the owning company to delete such data in accordance to , say, GDPR... What happens ?