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> Is it acceptable/preferred to store your entire db in RAM? If you can fit your db into RAM that's the ideal, but of course you also have to have a reliable,

by jbarham 16y ago

> Is it acceptable/preferred to store your entire db in RAM? If you can fit your db into RAM that's the ideal, but of course you also have to have a reliable, persistent backup. The best current compromise is probably PCI based SSD drives. John Ousterhout (of Tcl fame) and his group at Stanford are working on a project called RAMCloud that's exploring the feasibility of storing data in RAM at all times, using disk only as backup. See his projects page http://www.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/projects.php http://www.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/projects.php for more info. IMO, given the continuous improvements in RAM prices and network latencies, this type of setup for permanent storage will be the norm in data centers in a few years.

dedward 16y ago
It doesn't mean the DB files have to be stored in a ramdisk or something like that - you just need enough ram so your working set can fit in ram. These new projects really seem a lot like re-hashing problems that have already been solved over and over again - people just keep forgetting to do proper systems engineering in the first place. There is no magic bullet.