VoltDB and In-Memory Databases with John Hugg

“There’s a lot of value in moving logic to the data rather than moving data to the logic. And the issue here is the data is a lot bigger than the logic.”

NewSQL is a class of modern relational databases that seek to provide the same scalable performance of NoSQL systems for OLTP, while still maintaining the ACID guarantees of a traditional database system. VoltDB is a NewSQL database, designed in part by Turing Award Winner Michael Stonebraker.

Today’s guest is John Hugg, a founding engineer at VoltDB. Today’s show covers the internals of VoltDB, including concepts like tunable consistency, database replication, and the advantages of a deterministic logical log.

Questions

• What is unique about VoltDB?
• Could you give some examples of where VoltDB would be a good fit?
• What are the design challenges of embedding application logic into a database?
• What are the ways developers can typically set up replication on their database?
• In the context of databases, what does determinism mean?
• In practice, what are the difficulties of implementing determinism on a distributed database?
• As you’re developing a database, what types of tests do you run to model customer use cases?
• How should systems architects decide which database to choose for their data management requirements?

Links

• VoltDB
• Michael Stonebraker
• All In With Determinism for Performance and Testing in Distributed Systems
• ECC memory
• Deterministic and Nondeterministic Functions
• “Taming the 9s” by Ariel Weisberg
• John on Twitter

Pranay