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It's a good move and I even welcome it. However, I would have loved to see the removal of their enterprise version of the product at the same time. I love cockr

It's a good move and I even welcome it. However, I would have loved to see the removal of their enterprise version of the product at the same time. I love cockroachdb to death, but the key features that prevent me from using it in any real projects I'm doing are the backup/restore feature, which is currently locked behind their enterprise version. I also would love to use CDC and table partitioning. Nevertheless, great product.

napsterbr 7y ago
Never used CRDB so this question may make no sense, but given it builds upon Postgres (AFAIU), couldn't you use any of the many backup solutions Pg offers?
- jsty 7y ago
  It uses the Postgres wire protocol, but isn't based on Postgres under the hood
- ansible 7y ago
  CRDB is compatible with the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so you can use existing database drivers (in C#, Golang, whatever) to talk to a CRDB instance. The SQL itself is slightly different (no two databases are the same these days), so that would have to be adjusted. If your backup solution is fine with "SELECT * FROM table1; SELECT * FROM table2; ..." you can use the client interface for backups. But usually you want to a snapshot of the entire database at some (self-consistent!) point in time, and back up that.
  - napsterbr 7y ago
    This makes more sense, thanks. I just realized I mistook cockroachdb for timescaledb.
  - olavgg 7y ago
    Would ZFS snapshots work? It is what I use to backup PostgreSQL, much easier and faster than ordinary backup
    - benesch 7y ago
      Not unless you like pain. CockroachDB is distributed and uses Raft consensus under the hood, so you can't take a snapshot of just one node; you need to take a snapshot of all the nodes in your cluster, and you need to take those snapshots at the same logical instant. If the snapshots are from slightly different moments, when you boot the cluster up from the backup, the nodes will panic because you'll have corrupted the Raft state or otherwise caused the multiple replicas of the data to become inconsistent with one another. There is one safe way to make this work: turn off your cluster, back it up with ZFS snapshots, then turn it back on. (Some of Cockroach's production tests do exactly this, in fact, because restoring from ZFS snapshots is so unbelievably fast.) But if you have the flexibility to power cycle your production database off and on in order to back it up... you probably don't need a distributed database, because fault tolerance likely isn't among your requirements. (I'm a former CockroachDB engineer.)
  - thanatos_dem 7y ago
    > But usually you want to a snapshot of the entire database at some (self-consistent!) point in time This is actually super simple to do in Cockroach, as it supports time travel queries - https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/time-travel-queries-select-witty_subtitle-the_future/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/time-travel-queries-selec... So you can run a script at, say, 12:05 AM every morning, saving the table state “AS OF SYSTEM TIME 12:00” (simplifying syntax). And thereby get a fully consistent snapshot of all tables, as long as your backup script takes less time to execute than the configured table TTLs
- manigandham 7y ago
  CockroachDB is a proprietary database built in Go using RocksDB for the storage layer. It just uses the PostgreSQL protocol so it's compatible with existing drivers and applications but the underlying tech is entirely different.
kminehart 7y ago
Advanced backup restore is definitely blocked, but they do provide a `cockroach dump` utility, if that helps.
mindcrime 7y ago
Making a project that was Open Source, not Open Source anymore, is hardly a "good move". I mean, it might be a good financial move for Cockroach and their VC's, but I have a hard time seeing it as good for the world in general.
- ivalm 7y ago
  If it helps with increasing resource allocation to the project it can be a good move for the world as well. Currently resource allocation is sponsored by VCs, but this can't continue forever.
- mcms 7y ago
  For the world in general, indeed, it is better than having a dead or hardly-maintained project (which needs financial incentives from project owners). Don't you agree?
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    I don't really think increasing the world's stock of proprietary software is something to laud. Still, with their "switch to Apache after 3 years", I guess that this is still, on balance, better than nothing. What I reject is the idea that the only choices are "make this kind of switch" OR "having a dead or hardly-maintained project". Sounds a bit "fallacy of the excluded middle" to me. But they have the right to license their thing however they want, so what right do any of us really have to complain. I just find it frustrating to see people retreating from an Open Source position given my own deeply rooted ideological bias towards F/OSS.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      > What I reject is the idea that the only choices are "make this kind of switch" OR "having a dead or hardly-maintained project". Sounds a bit "fallacy of the excluded middle" to me. In general, that's of course obviously true. For software like this, that's geared toward use by businesses and SaaS applications, I agree with Cockroach Labs. Their hosted solution doesn't stand a chance if AWS decides to do a hosted version of CockroachDB, and they won't see a penny of that revenue. Since contributions outside of employees of Cockroach Labs are pretty minimal, it's a textbook recipe for eventual project death. > But they have the right to license their thing however they want, so what right do any of us really have to complain. Correct. And yet that doesn't seem to stop some people... > I just find it frustrating to see people retreating from an Open Source position given my own deeply rooted ideological bias towards F/OSS. I get that, and at some time in the past I probably agreed with you. At this point I'm too cynical to believe that Free Software can succeed solely on its merits. The economics just don't work out, especially when you're in a part of the industry with a lot of competition. And regardless, the new licensing terms are (in practical terms) identical to Apache for the vast majority of people who already use or might use CockroachDB. All they're restricting is the ability to create a Cockroach DB hosting business, and if you really want to do that, my moral position is that you should be financially contributing back to the DB anyway; otherwise you're taking freeloading to an extreme degree there.

napsterbr 7y ago

Never used CRDB so this question may make no sense, but given it builds upon Postgres (AFAIU), couldn't you use any of the many backup solutions Pg offers?

jsty 7y ago
It uses the Postgres wire protocol, but isn't based on Postgres under the hood
ansible 7y ago
CRDB is compatible with the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so you can use existing database drivers (in C#, Golang, whatever) to talk to a CRDB instance. The SQL itself is slightly different (no two databases are the same these days), so that would have to be adjusted. If your backup solution is fine with "SELECT * FROM table1; SELECT * FROM table2; ..." you can use the client interface for backups. But usually you want to a snapshot of the entire database at some (self-consistent!) point in time, and back up that.
- napsterbr 7y ago
  This makes more sense, thanks. I just realized I mistook cockroachdb for timescaledb.
- olavgg 7y ago
  Would ZFS snapshots work? It is what I use to backup PostgreSQL, much easier and faster than ordinary backup
  - benesch 7y ago
    Not unless you like pain. CockroachDB is distributed and uses Raft consensus under the hood, so you can't take a snapshot of just one node; you need to take a snapshot of all the nodes in your cluster, and you need to take those snapshots at the same logical instant. If the snapshots are from slightly different moments, when you boot the cluster up from the backup, the nodes will panic because you'll have corrupted the Raft state or otherwise caused the multiple replicas of the data to become inconsistent with one another. There is one safe way to make this work: turn off your cluster, back it up with ZFS snapshots, then turn it back on. (Some of Cockroach's production tests do exactly this, in fact, because restoring from ZFS snapshots is so unbelievably fast.) But if you have the flexibility to power cycle your production database off and on in order to back it up... you probably don't need a distributed database, because fault tolerance likely isn't among your requirements. (I'm a former CockroachDB engineer.)
- thanatos_dem 7y ago
  > But usually you want to a snapshot of the entire database at some (self-consistent!) point in time This is actually super simple to do in Cockroach, as it supports time travel queries - https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/time-travel-queries-select-witty_subtitle-the_future/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/time-travel-queries-selec... So you can run a script at, say, 12:05 AM every morning, saving the table state “AS OF SYSTEM TIME 12:00” (simplifying syntax). And thereby get a fully consistent snapshot of all tables, as long as your backup script takes less time to execute than the configured table TTLs
manigandham 7y ago
CockroachDB is a proprietary database built in Go using RocksDB for the storage layer. It just uses the PostgreSQL protocol so it's compatible with existing drivers and applications but the underlying tech is entirely different.

kminehart 7y ago

Advanced backup restore is definitely blocked, but they do provide a `cockroach dump` utility, if that helps.

mindcrime 7y ago

Making a project that was Open Source, not Open Source anymore, is hardly a "good move". I mean, it might be a good financial move for Cockroach and their VC's, but I have a hard time seeing it as good for the world in general.

ivalm 7y ago
If it helps with increasing resource allocation to the project it can be a good move for the world as well. Currently resource allocation is sponsored by VCs, but this can't continue forever.
mcms 7y ago
For the world in general, indeed, it is better than having a dead or hardly-maintained project (which needs financial incentives from project owners). Don't you agree?
- mindcrime 7y ago
  I don't really think increasing the world's stock of proprietary software is something to laud. Still, with their "switch to Apache after 3 years", I guess that this is still, on balance, better than nothing. What I reject is the idea that the only choices are "make this kind of switch" OR "having a dead or hardly-maintained project". Sounds a bit "fallacy of the excluded middle" to me. But they have the right to license their thing however they want, so what right do any of us really have to complain. I just find it frustrating to see people retreating from an Open Source position given my own deeply rooted ideological bias towards F/OSS.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    > What I reject is the idea that the only choices are "make this kind of switch" OR "having a dead or hardly-maintained project". Sounds a bit "fallacy of the excluded middle" to me. In general, that's of course obviously true. For software like this, that's geared toward use by businesses and SaaS applications, I agree with Cockroach Labs. Their hosted solution doesn't stand a chance if AWS decides to do a hosted version of CockroachDB, and they won't see a penny of that revenue. Since contributions outside of employees of Cockroach Labs are pretty minimal, it's a textbook recipe for eventual project death. > But they have the right to license their thing however they want, so what right do any of us really have to complain. Correct. And yet that doesn't seem to stop some people... > I just find it frustrating to see people retreating from an Open Source position given my own deeply rooted ideological bias towards F/OSS. I get that, and at some time in the past I probably agreed with you. At this point I'm too cynical to believe that Free Software can succeed solely on its merits. The economics just don't work out, especially when you're in a part of the industry with a lot of competition. And regardless, the new licensing terms are (in practical terms) identical to Apache for the vast majority of people who already use or might use CockroachDB. All they're restricting is the ability to create a Cockroach DB hosting business, and if you really want to do that, my moral position is that you should be financially contributing back to the DB anyway; otherwise you're taking freeloading to an extreme degree there.