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Wow, I used berkeley db pre-oracle acquisition a few jobs back -- we got an awesome support contract for 10k a year and deployed it on hundreds of servers -- an

by pquerna 16y ago

Wow, I used berkeley db pre-oracle acquisition a few jobs back -- we got an awesome support contract for 10k a year and deployed it on hundreds of servers -- and people like Keith Bostic replied to support emails when we found bugs! I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for Berkeley DB, even though Tokyo Cabernet doesn't offer all the same features, the combination of Tokyo and better distributed systems like Cassandra/MongoDB are certainly pushing down into the market in which I would want to use BDB.

strlen 16y ago
The BerkeleyDB engineers are still very responsive on forums, even if you pay them absolutely nothing. They are still able to maintain a "Sleepycat" culture and it's amazing how well involved their engineers remain with the customers. That being said, the current prices (for a support contract) do seem unreasonable: what if I'd just like support, but not a commercial license? Distributed systems can be built upon BDB, we've had very good luck with using BerkeleyDB-Je in Voldemort. Many services within Yahoo and Amazon use custom distributed systems built upon BerkeleyDB. BerkeleyDB's own distribution, however, seems to just not be the right model for most people (HA "floating master" with Paxos elections). We (as did Amazon in the original Dynamo paper) found it easier to build their own replication, using BDB as one of the storage options. Tokyo Tyrant is great if your data fits into memory. If it doesn't, performance declines without any grace (compare with BerkeleyDB where the performance remains reasonable with a 5:1 data:RAM ratio and surprisingly usable even with a 10:1 ratio). That being said, there are some interesting alternative models e.g., Basho's bitcask, but it solves a different problem (purely K/V lookups vs. a B+Tree or -- with BDB-Je -- a log structured B+Tree). I really wish there was a C/C++ based (at least until the Azul GC enhancements or the G1 collector become mainstream, making it possible to have a cache of over 10-15gb without pauses) log-structured B+Tree implementation... perhaps I'll get bored and write a toy one one day.
code_duck 16y ago
I had no idea they grew Cabernet grapes in Japan. Certainly something to check out!

by pquerna 16y ago

strlen 16y ago

The BerkeleyDB engineers are still very responsive on forums, even if you pay them absolutely nothing. They are still able to maintain a "Sleepycat" culture and it's amazing how well involved their engineers remain with the customers. That being said, the current prices (for a support contract) do seem unreasonable: what if I'd just like support, but not a commercial license? Distributed systems can be built upon BDB, we've had very good luck with using BerkeleyDB-Je in Voldemort. Many services within Yahoo and Amazon use custom distributed systems built upon BerkeleyDB. BerkeleyDB's own distribution, however, seems to just not be the right model for most people (HA "floating master" with Paxos elections). We (as did Amazon in the original Dynamo paper) found it easier to build their own replication, using BDB as one of the storage options. Tokyo Tyrant is great if your data fits into memory. If it doesn't, performance declines without any grace (compare with BerkeleyDB where the performance remains reasonable with a 5:1 data:RAM ratio and surprisingly usable even with a 10:1 ratio). That being said, there are some interesting alternative models e.g., Basho's bitcask, but it solves a different problem (purely K/V lookups vs. a B+Tree or -- with BDB-Je -- a log structured B+Tree). I really wish there was a C/C++ based (at least until the Azul GC enhancements or the G1 collector become mainstream, making it possible to have a cache of over 10-15gb without pauses) log-structured B+Tree implementation... perhaps I'll get bored and write a toy one one day.

code_duck 16y ago

I had no idea they grew Cabernet grapes in Japan. Certainly something to check out!