Live data from Hacker News

Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

techcrunch.com

91–100 of 105 posts

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#91
post #73

I don't really understand the MariaDB love around here. If you look at actual production usage, MySQL gets the lion's share, looking at the customers each lists at their website. Oracle has been surprisingly benevolent as stewards of MySQL. That Business Source License that MariaDB put forward for new code at one point[1] looked like something I think would have cost an awful lot of goodwill if anyone else had used i…

Actually:

- MariaDB MaxScale 2.0 will be under the BSL.

- MariaDB Server will continue to be licensed under GPL in perpetuity, while its connectors will continue to be under the LGPL.

To be honest I cannot blame Monty. Google and Facebook were built on MySQL and probably didn't give back as much as he thought would be a fair shar. I guess he doesn't want to see this happening again.

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#92
post #18

Good move, will be good for the database for sure. I think of this article [0] every time someone says "why not just use ": Rule 1: Developing a good DBMS requires 5-7 years and tens of millions of dollars. That’s if things go extremely well. Rule 2: You aren’t an exception to Rule 1. 0: http://www.dbms2.com/2013/03/18/dbms-development-marklogic-h...

The reason is that Alibaba is stuck with mysql and complex queries being put very very deep inside their architecture.

And yes, things like top level transaction databases are like hand maintained clusters of 20 servers for the whole Alibaba with query caching servers in front of them to prevent OOMs

They tried to get rid of it many times as written in their tech blogs, but this probably indicates that they finally gave up on such endeavour, choosing to own Mysql instead

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#93
post #92
post #18

Good move, will be good for the database for sure. I think of this article [0] every time someone says "why not just use ": Rule 1: Developing a good DBMS requires 5-7 years and tens of millions of dollars. That’s if things go extremely well. Rule 2: You aren’t an exception to Rule 1. 0: http://www.dbms2.com/2013/03/18/dbms-development-marklogic-h...

The reason is that Alibaba is stuck with mysql and complex queries being put very very deep inside their architecture. And yes, things like top level transaction databases are like hand maintained clusters of 20 servers for the whole Alibaba with query caching servers in front of them to prevent OOMs They tried to get rid of it many times as written in their tech blogs, but this probably indicates that they finally g…

Their most sisyphean issue is the transaction locking. Imagine, 20 people trying to buy 19 trinkets, and you try to resolve transactions in a distributed DB, and two guys manage to buy the same thing in the exactly same nanosecond. The task is hard to tackle.

If you time-atomize the transaction, you get increase in minimal latency.

If you simply use a single server with very fast DB, you get reliability concerns.

With token ring locking, you get both.

And so on, so on, and on

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#94
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In-memory capability, hiring pool of MySQL/MariaDB developers tends to be larger/wider, Galera cluster (M-M functionality), if the queries trend towards simplicity then MySQL/MariaDB tends to be more performant, Postgres can have issues with write amplification, etc. Uber (I know, I know) switched to MySQL, here are some reasons why: https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/

Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585 Re: Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12179222 Why we lost Uber as a user | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201353 > naming / pronunciation diversion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201672

I never understood which table caused these issues at Uber. They use an example with birthday changes for users. That's no real world example. Apparently issues were caused by a small table updated 500+ times a second and used in a lot of joins. That could be the driver table but why would they update it so much? Personal information rarely changes and live information about the driver (trip status, position, online/offline) should be stored separate from that? And you wouldn't need transactions around those updates?

Did they ever clarify what data actually caused the issues?

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#95
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Familiarity? MySQL/MariaDB is pretty much the "standard" database that most programmer started with. At least in university. So there is no point on using PosgreSQL if MariaDB fits the bill for them. Less learning curve, easy to hire for etc

Also the default database on most shared hosting, so anybody who got a start in web dev likely cut their teeth on MySQL.

Yeah, LAMP stacks are to blame for it's popularity.

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#96
post #91
post #73

I don't really understand the MariaDB love around here. If you look at actual production usage, MySQL gets the lion's share, looking at the customers each lists at their website. Oracle has been surprisingly benevolent as stewards of MySQL. That Business Source License that MariaDB put forward for new code at one point[1] looked like something I think would have cost an awful lot of goodwill if anyone else had used i…

Actually: - MariaDB MaxScale 2.0 will be under the BSL. - MariaDB Server will continue to be licensed under GPL in perpetuity, while its connectors will continue to be under the LGPL. To be honest I cannot blame Monty. Google and Facebook were built on MySQL and probably didn't give back as much as he thought would be a fair shar. I guess he doesn't want to see this happening again.

He’s free to do what he wants with his company.

The problem is all these people going into headless chicken mode about how Oracle could discontinue the open source licence of the “original” MySQL, so they’re embracing MariaDB (the company) because it’s run by Monty so it must be open source friendly.

You can use/support MariaDB all you want but let’s not pretend they’re great bastions of open source compared to Oracle in the MySQL realm.

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#97
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually: - MariaDB MaxScale 2.0 will be under the BSL. - MariaDB Server will continue to be licensed under GPL in perpetuity, while its connectors will continue to be under the LGPL. To be honest I cannot blame Monty. Google and Facebook were built on MySQL and probably didn't give back as much as he thought would be a fair shar. I guess he doesn't want to see this happening again.

He’s free to do what he wants with his company. The problem is all these people going into headless chicken mode about how Oracle could discontinue the open source licence of the “original” MySQL, so they’re embracing MariaDB (the company) because it’s run by Monty so it must be open source friendly. You can use/support MariaDB all you want but let’s not pretend they’re great bastions of open source compared to Oracl…

The grand parent made it sound as if they changed the MariaDB server license, so I wanted to make a clarification that this is not the case.

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#98
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s free to do what he wants with his company. The problem is all these people going into headless chicken mode about how Oracle could discontinue the open source licence of the “original” MySQL, so they’re embracing MariaDB (the company) because it’s run by Monty so it must be open source friendly. You can use/support MariaDB all you want but let’s not pretend they’re great bastions of open source compared to Oracl…

The grand parent made it sound as if they changed the MariaDB server license, so I wanted to make a clarification that this is not the case.

Not really. S/he referenced the BSL, which MariaDB (the company) absolutely uses for it's MaxScale product.

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#99
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grand parent made it sound as if they changed the MariaDB server license, so I wanted to make a clarification that this is not the case.

Not really. S/he referenced the BSL, which MariaDB (the company) absolutely uses for it's MaxScale product.

> That Business Source License that MariaDB put forward for new code at one point

As I said, I just made a clarification on that “new code” means other products and not MariaDB server.

Just for the record I am not a MySQL-based DB user, so I don’t really care at all about MariaDB or BSL. My license of choice for releasing my code is AGPL.

Re: Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB

#100
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/memory-storage-engin... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10692398/how-do-i-make-a... https://www.google.com/search?q=mysql+in-memory maybe?

I'm aware of the memory capabilities of mysql in general, but the insinuation was that mysql had more capabilities of in-memory processing than postgres - I dont see anything in those links that are things that postgres cant do - although they may be implemented differently.

It is simple, MySql has in-memory storage, and PSQL doesn't: all updates for your table are forced to be synced to the disk, which kills performance.
Post reply on HN