4 ms·

Can anyone elaborate a use case for something like this? I’m guessing there’s some blockchain connection but it’s not immediately obvious

garybake 8y ago
You can use it for "what if" analysis. - Take a fork of the database - Transform data in the fork. i.e. costs+5% - Point your current queries to run on the fork You can see how with just the effort repointing queries a reporting app could show the real world and the world you are modelling.
- rubyfan 8y ago
  That’s helpful, maybe I’m naive but isn’t that like an Excel workload? I haven’t seen scenarios where the entire database needs that kind of functionality. Can you elaborate on what kind of data and business problem one would be working on where they need that level of robust versioning?
amirouche 8y ago
Uses cases for a versioned in branches data store that are not blockchain related. 0) The most obvious use case is to replace git, because git proper doesn't handle big files very well, let alone bigger than RAM structured data. Mind the fact you might still need an ad-hoc solution for binary data. WT does have a limitation on value size. 1) There is various data science uses cases, like sharing data [0] or A/B testing stuff. 2) Anywhere you need an audit trail .ie you need to look back at previous states, whether it is for debugging purpose or domain logic versioned datastore is a compromise between event sourcing (pure log) and non-versioned databases. [0] Collaborative Open Data versioning: A Pragmatic Approach Using Linked Data [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audit_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audit_trail edit: cosmit.
- pbowyer 8y ago
  A real-life situation I ran into: 3) Take a copy of the data store offline, and later merge it back into the online database Manually resolving conflicts is fine. The alternative is to rebuild a system on Couchbase/pouchdb, or rewrite on event sourcing, neither of which - when the system otherwise lends itself to RDBMS - is my choice.
  - garmaine 8y ago
    Does the OP support merging? I didn’t see that.
    - jedberg 8y ago
      No it doesn't, which seems to eliminate a lot of use cases. Merging is listed in the nice-to-have-in-the-future section.
_jal 8y ago
Data modeling under the many worlds interpretation.

garybake 8y ago

You can use it for "what if" analysis. - Take a fork of the database - Transform data in the fork. i.e. costs+5% - Point your current queries to run on the fork You can see how with just the effort repointing queries a reporting app could show the real world and the world you are modelling.

rubyfan 8y ago
That’s helpful, maybe I’m naive but isn’t that like an Excel workload? I haven’t seen scenarios where the entire database needs that kind of functionality. Can you elaborate on what kind of data and business problem one would be working on where they need that level of robust versioning?

amirouche 8y ago

Uses cases for a versioned in branches data store that are not blockchain related. 0) The most obvious use case is to replace git, because git proper doesn't handle big files very well, let alone bigger than RAM structured data. Mind the fact you might still need an ad-hoc solution for binary data. WT does have a limitation on value size. 1) There is various data science uses cases, like sharing data [0] or A/B testing stuff. 2) Anywhere you need an audit trail .ie you need to look back at previous states, whether it is for debugging purpose or domain logic versioned datastore is a compromise between event sourcing (pure log) and non-versioned databases. [0] Collaborative Open Data versioning: A Pragmatic Approach Using Linked Data [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audit_trail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audit_trail edit: cosmit.

pbowyer 8y ago
A real-life situation I ran into: 3) Take a copy of the data store offline, and later merge it back into the online database Manually resolving conflicts is fine. The alternative is to rebuild a system on Couchbase/pouchdb, or rewrite on event sourcing, neither of which - when the system otherwise lends itself to RDBMS - is my choice.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Does the OP support merging? I didn’t see that.
  - jedberg 8y ago
    No it doesn't, which seems to eliminate a lot of use cases. Merging is listed in the nice-to-have-in-the-future section.

_jal 8y ago

Data modeling under the many worlds interpretation.