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Anecdotally I know of one company which is also in the same boat and generally regrets their usage of Datomic and is trying to move away from it last I talked w

Anecdotally I know of one company which is also in the same boat and generally regrets their usage of Datomic and is trying to move away from it last I talked with them. However, there's also people on HN like dustingetz who have had a great time with Datomic and use it as a core component of their product. I just wish Cognitect would allow people to run public benchmarks of Datomic to make it easier to evaluate its tradeoffs.

lukashrb 6y ago
Do you have more detailed info on this? I guess this could really help making a decision and understanding the tradeoff's of using datomic.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  What the company ran into? Unfortunately not :/. It was a quick chat in an informal setting with their VP of engineering (I think?) that really was just a "huh, interesting moment" for me (although I've coded in Clojure for a full-time job before I have essentially no personal experience with Datomic). As for the positive side, I think dustingetz monitors Clojure and Datomic threads pretty closely so maybe they can chime in here.
zeroDivisible 6y ago
What is the policy of Cognitect re: public benchmarks? I did not know that.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  > The Licensee hereby agrees, without the prior written consent of Cognitect, which may be withheld or conditioned at Cognitect’s sole discretion, it will not... publicly display or communicate the results of internal performance testing or other benchmarking or performance evaluation of the Software From the Datomic EULA here: https://www.datomic.com/on-prem-eula.html https://www.datomic.com/on-prem-eula.html
  - mercer 6y ago
    That's just vile. is there any /good/ defense of this kind of agreement other than a 'think of the children' argument that people might make a mistake in their performance reviews?
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      It's annoying, but it's pretty standard in commercial databases: if your competitors refuse to allow public benchmarks, all it can do is hurt you.
      - dwohnitmok 6y ago
        How standard is it? As far as I know among databases MS SQL and Oracle do this but do other commercial databases do this as well?
        fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
        https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ It’s common enough to have a name: “DeWitt clause”. It sounds like IBM is the only major commercial rdbms vendor to allow benchmarks?
        dwohnitmok 6y ago
        That article only lists MS and Oracle though. Apart from IBM, I don't think CockroachDB Enterprise has such a prohibition, nor does Google Spanner (I think?), nor does Amazon Aurora (again I think?). And of course all the open source competitors don't have this clause. Basically my impression is that DeWitt clauses are common enough to be well-known, but still in the distinct minority. That's just an impression though.

lukashrb 6y ago

Do you have more detailed info on this? I guess this could really help making a decision and understanding the tradeoff's of using datomic.

dwohnitmok 6y ago
What the company ran into? Unfortunately not :/. It was a quick chat in an informal setting with their VP of engineering (I think?) that really was just a "huh, interesting moment" for me (although I've coded in Clojure for a full-time job before I have essentially no personal experience with Datomic). As for the positive side, I think dustingetz monitors Clojure and Datomic threads pretty closely so maybe they can chime in here.

zeroDivisible 6y ago

What is the policy of Cognitect re: public benchmarks? I did not know that.

dwohnitmok 6y ago
> The Licensee hereby agrees, without the prior written consent of Cognitect, which may be withheld or conditioned at Cognitect’s sole discretion, it will not... publicly display or communicate the results of internal performance testing or other benchmarking or performance evaluation of the Software From the Datomic EULA here: https://www.datomic.com/on-prem-eula.html https://www.datomic.com/on-prem-eula.html
- mercer 6y ago
  That's just vile. is there any /good/ defense of this kind of agreement other than a 'think of the children' argument that people might make a mistake in their performance reviews?
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    It's annoying, but it's pretty standard in commercial databases: if your competitors refuse to allow public benchmarks, all it can do is hurt you.
    - dwohnitmok 6y ago
      How standard is it? As far as I know among databases MS SQL and Oracle do this but do other commercial databases do this as well?
      - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
        https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ It’s common enough to have a name: “DeWitt clause”. It sounds like IBM is the only major commercial rdbms vendor to allow benchmarks?
        dwohnitmok 6y ago
        That article only lists MS and Oracle though. Apart from IBM, I don't think CockroachDB Enterprise has such a prohibition, nor does Google Spanner (I think?), nor does Amazon Aurora (again I think?). And of course all the open source competitors don't have this clause. Basically my impression is that DeWitt clauses are common enough to be well-known, but still in the distinct minority. That's just an impression though.