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I can't say I found the piece particularly insightful. It seemed to imply that mnesia is the DB of the future as soon as everyone realises that everything they

I can't say I found the piece particularly insightful. It seemed to imply that mnesia is the DB of the future as soon as everyone realises that everything they are doing is completely wrong and they should be doing things that are more suited to mnesia. Without saying what those things are. I actually found one of the child comments [1] was pushing in a better direction. Essentially, the vast drop in $/TB of storage means that persistence of time series/ event type data is practical for the masses now. Sure it's found a niche in ads on the web, but it has much wider applicability than that. I personally think that Erlang is particularly well suited to this space. [1] http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2015-October/086432.html http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2015-October/08...

jacquesm 11y ago
The reason why the comment is insightful is that suddenly Erlang has found itself in the crosshairs of an industry that it is particularly useful for (ad-tech) but there are many more applications that have nothing to do with adtech which erlang is also very well suited for. So for adtech to start pushing the direction in which erlang/mnesia evolve would be wrong. As for the drop in $/TB of storage, that drop has been steadily going on since the 70's of the previous century and for a very large chunk of that period Erlang/mnesia have been adapting bit by bit to take advantage of that price-decrease. Persistence of time series and event type data does not (usually) require the kind of storage solution that mnesia offers, a much simpler storage medium would probably suffice and/or be a better choice for that application anyway, storing such data without further processing in a relational database is a bit of a cop-out. Most of those applications could benefit from digesting and compression which is something you're not going to easily retro-fit onto an existing database.
- lucozade 11y ago
  > Persistence of time series and event type data does not (usually) require the kind of storage solution that mnesia offers Indeed. That's precisely my point (just stated better than me). Erlang looks like being a very good fit for a large class of applications of this form. mnesia, on the other hand, is not well suited as the persistent storage for them. It would follow then that it could make sense for the "next gen" storage for Erlang to be more in line with this sort of thinking in the way you describe. As to the drop in $/TB, it's been pretty steadily exponential. But the cost of consuming and analysing TB of data has only really been practical for non-specialist houses for 5-10 years. When you're in the low GB range then a static data picture makes sense. When you're able to play with TB of data then a dynamic picture makes sense and Erlang really shines.

jacquesm 11y ago

The reason why the comment is insightful is that suddenly Erlang has found itself in the crosshairs of an industry that it is particularly useful for (ad-tech) but there are many more applications that have nothing to do with adtech which erlang is also very well suited for. So for adtech to start pushing the direction in which erlang/mnesia evolve would be wrong. As for the drop in $/TB of storage, that drop has been steadily going on since the 70's of the previous century and for a very large chunk of that period Erlang/mnesia have been adapting bit by bit to take advantage of that price-decrease. Persistence of time series and event type data does not (usually) require the kind of storage solution that mnesia offers, a much simpler storage medium would probably suffice and/or be a better choice for that application anyway, storing such data without further processing in a relational database is a bit of a cop-out. Most of those applications could benefit from digesting and compression which is something you're not going to easily retro-fit onto an existing database.

lucozade 11y ago
> Persistence of time series and event type data does not (usually) require the kind of storage solution that mnesia offers Indeed. That's precisely my point (just stated better than me). Erlang looks like being a very good fit for a large class of applications of this form. mnesia, on the other hand, is not well suited as the persistent storage for them. It would follow then that it could make sense for the "next gen" storage for Erlang to be more in line with this sort of thinking in the way you describe. As to the drop in $/TB, it's been pretty steadily exponential. But the cost of consuming and analysing TB of data has only really been practical for non-specialist houses for 5-10 years. When you're in the low GB range then a static data picture makes sense. When you're able to play with TB of data then a dynamic picture makes sense and Erlang really shines.