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It seems new users and people who saw the ease of querying, distribution, good docs, solid architecture jumped on board. Lots of HN articles were written. The t
by rdtsc 10y ago
It seems new users and people who saw the ease of querying, distribution, good docs, solid architecture jumped on board. Lots of HN articles were written. The technology is really solid. Come to think of it, don't recall seeing a single negative RocksDB article on HN, ever.
However databases are hard and they are a bit like operating systems. They are so important that people expect them to have a long track record of stability, and that they should also be be completely open, or have someone like Oracle behind it.
If it is open and completely free it doesn't make money.
And large support contracts are lucrative with enterprise customers, but they will not buy into a relatively new database product and entrust its crown jewels to it.
Another, probably the most important, element is timing. MongoDB was there first and it made a huge difference. They shipped with really terrible defaults, lost and corrupted people's data. And they are still around. Had RocksDB come at that time, it would have been a different database market today no doubt...
It is really painful to see this because technology is there, people working on it are really smart, it is just this market is fickle.
- halestock 10y agoInteresting that you make the comparison to operating systems, since Linux is open and completely free and doesn't have a big company behind it. (Granted, I think the big difference is that Linux doesn't have as many competitors as exist for DBs today.)
- rdtsc 10y agoIt is an "or" thing. It can be completely free and open like PostgreSQL or it should have Oracle behind it. OSes are a bit like that. Either a multi-billion dollar company like Apple or Microsoft behind it or it is completely open.
- bdcravens 10y ago> Linux is open and completely free and doesn't have a big company behind it Only small companies like IBM and Google who have put hundreds of millions of dollars into it.
- rdtsc 10y agoThe important part is it doesn't have "a" big company behind it. Contrast with Android. It is free and open and Amazon and others have forked it and used it. But the situation is not the same. If Google tomorrow drops out and doesn't want to contribute to Linux kernel, no big deal. IBM and Redhat will. If those don't want, others will.
- thesmallestcat 10y agoI'm confused, where does RocksDB come into this? Typo?
- rdtsc 10y agoOh sorry, yap, was thinking about RethinkDB.
- mercer 10y ago> And large support contracts are lucrative with enterprise customers, but they will not buy into a relatively new database product and entrust its crown jewels to it. While it's still entirely unclear whether and how RethinkDB and Horizon will develop from now on, I have become more hesitant to use a 'relatively new database product' even for my side projects, let alone something 'important'. This was my first experience using some piece of technology (library, framework, etc.) that suddenly potentially won't survive, and it's probably a good thing that I learned this lesson with a relatively unimportant side project. Still, it becomes a bit of a fulfilling prophecy: I'm now even less likely to invest in a new database product. I really hope RethinkDB and Horizon will find a home, because I've really enjoyed working with both.