Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Why You Shouldn't Write a Database
Search
benbjohnson
October 22, 2015
Technology
2
550
Why You Shouldn't Write a Database
Talk given at the October 2015 Denver Go meetup.
benbjohnson
October 22, 2015
Tweet
Share
More Decks by benbjohnson
See All by benbjohnson
Static Code Analysis Using SSA
benbjohnson
6
1.7k
Writing a High Performance Database in Go
benbjohnson
11
6.8k
Raft: The Understandable Distributed Consensus Protocol
benbjohnson
106
28k
Behavioral Analytics - Understanding the "why" and "how" of your users.
benbjohnson
9
2k
New Tech - Sky
benbjohnson
2
380
Behavioral Databases
benbjohnson
16
2.5k
Sky Analytics Pitch Deck
benbjohnson
0
600
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
CIでのgolangci-lintの実行を約90%削減した話
kazukihayase
0
340
白金鉱業Meetup_Vol.19_PoCはデモで語れ!顧客の本音とインサイトを引き出すソリューション構築
brainpadpr
2
480
Model Mondays S2E02: Model Context Protocol
nitya
0
180
CSS、JSをHTMLテンプレートにまとめるフロントエンド戦略
d120145
0
220
AI技術トレンド勉強会 #1MCPの基礎と実務での応用
nisei_k
1
240
VCpp Link and Library - C++ breaktime 2025 Summer
harukasao
0
220
~宇宙最速~2025年AWS Summit レポート
satodesu
1
1.3k
ローカルLLMでファインチューニング
knishioka
0
120
Amazon ECS & AWS Fargate 運用アーキテクチャ2025 / Amazon ECS and AWS Fargate Ops Architecture 2025
iselegant
15
4.5k
rubygem開発で鍛える設計力
joker1007
1
110
JSX - 歴史を振り返り、⾯⽩がって、エモくなろう
pal4de
3
1.1k
成立するElixirの再束縛(再代入)可という選択
kubell_hr
0
910
Featured
See All Featured
[RailsConf 2023 Opening Keynote] The Magic of Rails
eileencodes
29
9.5k
Designing Dashboards & Data Visualisations in Web Apps
destraynor
231
53k
Sharpening the Axe: The Primacy of Toolmaking
bcantrill
43
2.4k
KATA
mclloyd
29
14k
Designing Experiences People Love
moore
142
24k
Performance Is Good for Brains [We Love Speed 2024]
tammyeverts
10
920
Fashionably flexible responsive web design (full day workshop)
malarkey
407
66k
Site-Speed That Sticks
csswizardry
10
650
Java REST API Framework Comparison - PWX 2021
mraible
31
8.6k
Reflections from 52 weeks, 52 projects
jeffersonlam
351
20k
Making the Leap to Tech Lead
cromwellryan
134
9.3k
StorybookのUI Testing Handbookを読んだ
zakiyama
30
5.8k
Transcript
Why You Shouldn’t Write a Database Ben Johnson
Let’s define “database”
low-level LevelDB, BerkeleyDB, LMDB
Direct interface to OS Files, pages, & blocks Responsible for
data integrity Typically key/value
high-level SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Mongo, InfluxDB, etc
Builds on low-level stores Rows, tables, indexes Interfaces with end
user Relational, document, time series
Me
SkyDB ReportifyDB BoltDB InfluxDB
There are n+1 reasons not to write a database
#1. High barrier to entry
How to write a database
None
legit
sorta, but not quite
seriously?
suggests using XML
nope
Available resources?
Research papers!
Research papers! Narrowly focused (indexing, storage, locks)
Research papers! High level (little or no code)
Research papers! Assumes a Ph.D
Read source code!
Read source code! MySQL >1M SLOC
Read source code! Even small databases are 10KLOC+
There is no Writing Databases 101
#2. Debugging Sucks
Bugs are catastrophic Cause corruption, loss of data integrity
Bugs are catastrophic Users with data loss are very unhappy
Find a good hex editor
Find a good hex editor (I use Hex Fiend)
None
This is not what a database looks like
None
THIS is what a database looks like
Debugging w/o data Users usually can’t release their data
#3. Tradeoffs
Users don’t understand tradeoffs
None
Read Optimized vs Write Optimized
CPU Bound vs IO Bound
https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832
Features are liabilities It’s not if you have bugs, it’s
how many
#4. Limited Community
Very few people who have written a production database
TONS of people who will tell you why your database
sucks
Databases are hard
The End
The End (Just kidding!)
Not scared off yet?
Only 2 reasons to write a database:
#1. To learn
Data Integrity Indexing Isolation levels Recovery Prefetching Parser & Lexers
Replication Snapshotting Transactions Materialized View Referential Integrity Query Compilation Query Planning Query Optimization Serializability Write Ahead Log Memory Profiling Redo/Undo Log Snapshot Isolation Recovery Two-Phase Commit Quorums
#2. Gain efficiency (For a specific use case)
The more generic your database, the fewer assumptions you can
make
Go write a database!
The End @benbjohnson
Questions? @benbjohnson