4 ms·

Kindred and CockroachDB Partner to Build a Global Online Gaming Platform

44 points by jinqueeny 9y ago

jinqueeny 9y ago
> I’m sure at times our internal processes - pretty much inevitable for a medium size company - have meant we have moved a little slower than Cockroach would have been able to, as a smaller more agile company but they understood that and were happy to move at our pace. What does this mean exactly？
- mosselman 9y ago
  If 'our' refers to Kindred I think they are saying that they believe that they move slowly as a company and that they believe this is due to their size. They also believe that Cockroach moves more quickly and they believe that this is due to Cockroach being 'agile'. He then says that Cockroach is fine with moving slowly with them. These sound like euphemisms for "We are a company where decisions are not based on trust so they require a lot of red tape. Cockroach's team does not have to wait for decision makers to cover themselves from potential backfire as much and as such can start development of things more quickly. They are willing however to provide our managers with ass-covering materials such as certifications, domain models and requirement documents that start with 'an overview of the company' and add with a 'glossary' though."
  - couchand 9y ago
    It's probably worth noting that Kindred operates in a highly-regulated industry, which may affect the wisdom of making many decisions based on trust.
jinqueeny 9y ago
Another report from Kindred here: http://www.kindredgroup.com/kindred-futures-and-cockroach-labs-partner/ http://www.kindredgroup.com/kindred-futures-and-cockroach-la...
tapirl 9y ago
> Outside of Google, there is no solution like this available anywhere. Then why not use Google service (I think it is spanner)?
- dx034 9y ago
  Costs, freedom to modify/finetune the product, vendor lock-in, geographic restrictions. There are a lot of reasons not always to go with one of the big 3 cloud providers. I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that only one company has the knowledge of providing a certain technology used by other companies. EDIT: > Kindred is a rapidly growing, global business with strict data privacy and technical requirements. That probably explains why not to use Google Cloud or any other US based provider for EU data.
- grizzles 9y ago
  There's comdb2: https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2 https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    Wow, comdb2 is hard to Google anything for. Seems google interprets 'comdb2' as 'sql', with highlights and all. `comdb2 performance` just shows sql performance articles. Unless that's just because no resources actually exist, heh
  - ddorian43 9y ago
    Looks like it doesn't have built-in sharding (from the docs, readme)
icemelt8 9y ago
The name repulses me
jjirsa 9y ago
> By working with CockroachDB, we expect to be able to operate multiple active data centers – all perfectly synchronised with each other ... > Outside of Google, there is no solution like this available anywhere Cassandra offers cross WAN, multi-DC strong consistency so the “no solution exists” line is nonsense. I built geo-aware, cross DC gaming platforms for ps3/x360 on Cassandra in 2009. Unless this is another fun twist on words where they’re pretending like they’re beating CAP like how google asserts that their network is sufficiently reliable that partitions become a nonfactor, but of course the wording is a PR so who knows what they actually mean.
- state_machine 9y ago
  FWIW, CockroachDB doesn't claim to beat CAP: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/limits-of-the-cap-theorem https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/limits-of-the-cap-theorem
- mjibson 9y ago
  There were Jepsen tests done on Cassandra a few years ago: https://aphyr.com/posts/294-jepsen-cassandra https://aphyr.com/posts/294-jepsen-cassandra that showed various failures. Some of these haven't been fixed yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592269. So I think it's safe to claim that Cassandra doesn't offer strong consistency.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
jinqueeny 9y ago
Another great NewSQL database, TiDB, is production ready: https://github.com/pingcap/tidb https://github.com/pingcap/tidb

44 points by jinqueeny 9y ago

> I’m sure at times our internal processes - pretty much inevitable for a medium size company - have meant we have moved a little slower than Cockroach would have been able to, as a smaller more agile company but they understood that and were happy to move at our pace. What does this mean exactly？

mosselman 9y ago
If 'our' refers to Kindred I think they are saying that they believe that they move slowly as a company and that they believe this is due to their size. They also believe that Cockroach moves more quickly and they believe that this is due to Cockroach being 'agile'. He then says that Cockroach is fine with moving slowly with them. These sound like euphemisms for "We are a company where decisions are not based on trust so they require a lot of red tape. Cockroach's team does not have to wait for decision makers to cover themselves from potential backfire as much and as such can start development of things more quickly. They are willing however to provide our managers with ass-covering materials such as certifications, domain models and requirement documents that start with 'an overview of the company' and add with a 'glossary' though."
- couchand 9y ago
  It's probably worth noting that Kindred operates in a highly-regulated industry, which may affect the wisdom of making many decisions based on trust.

jinqueeny 9y ago

Another report from Kindred here: http://www.kindredgroup.com/kindred-futures-and-cockroach-labs-partner/ http://www.kindredgroup.com/kindred-futures-and-cockroach-la...

tapirl 9y ago

> Outside of Google, there is no solution like this available anywhere. Then why not use Google service (I think it is spanner)?

dx034 9y ago
Costs, freedom to modify/finetune the product, vendor lock-in, geographic restrictions. There are a lot of reasons not always to go with one of the big 3 cloud providers. I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that only one company has the knowledge of providing a certain technology used by other companies. EDIT: > Kindred is a rapidly growing, global business with strict data privacy and technical requirements. That probably explains why not to use Google Cloud or any other US based provider for EU data.
grizzles 9y ago
There's comdb2: https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2 https://github.com/bloomberg/comdb2
- bpicolo 9y ago
  Wow, comdb2 is hard to Google anything for. Seems google interprets 'comdb2' as 'sql', with highlights and all. `comdb2 performance` just shows sql performance articles. Unless that's just because no resources actually exist, heh
- ddorian43 9y ago
  Looks like it doesn't have built-in sharding (from the docs, readme)

icemelt8 9y ago

The name repulses me

jjirsa 9y ago

> By working with CockroachDB, we expect to be able to operate multiple active data centers – all perfectly synchronised with each other ... > Outside of Google, there is no solution like this available anywhere Cassandra offers cross WAN, multi-DC strong consistency so the “no solution exists” line is nonsense. I built geo-aware, cross DC gaming platforms for ps3/x360 on Cassandra in 2009. Unless this is another fun twist on words where they’re pretending like they’re beating CAP like how google asserts that their network is sufficiently reliable that partitions become a nonfactor, but of course the wording is a PR so who knows what they actually mean.

state_machine 9y ago
FWIW, CockroachDB doesn't claim to beat CAP: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/limits-of-the-cap-theorem https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/limits-of-the-cap-theorem
mjibson 9y ago
There were Jepsen tests done on Cassandra a few years ago: https://aphyr.com/posts/294-jepsen-cassandra https://aphyr.com/posts/294-jepsen-cassandra that showed various failures. Some of these haven't been fixed yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592269. So I think it's safe to claim that Cassandra doesn't offer strong consistency.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

jinqueeny 9y ago

Another great NewSQL database, TiDB, is production ready: https://github.com/pingcap/tidb https://github.com/pingcap/tidb