7 ms·

Canonical drops CouchDB because they were unable to make it scale up

110 points by patrickaljord 15y ago

ecommando 15y ago
Another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust, bamp bamp, another one bites the dust.
- va_coder 15y ago
  Mr. Ellison, you're the MS of databases. Don't rejoice too much.
  - ecommando 15y ago
    Awww.. you mad... I'm so sick of hearing about all these "new" technologies that are so revolutionary, but can't hold a candle to postgres and memcache. Despite what the brochures tell you, a "degree" from DeVry and 3 hours in a Ruby book doesn't make an architect, and this is one of several "revolutionary technologies", like Ruby, that won't scale and will wither and die.
    - edu 15y ago
      Exactly, how does a programming language scale or not-scale? Ruby might be slower and hungrier (memory) than other languages but it's the applications that might or might not-scale.
      - j45 15y ago
        Assuming you have the most efficient code possible, the efficiency and speed of the interpreter can still affect the ability to scale an app. Another thought is, the interpreter may or may not have scaling / clustering available, be it through a built-in functionality or an external queue or something. Sometimes we have to code around interpreter/speed issues. I work in the JVM languages sometimes. I have to do things differently directly in Java if a particular JVM language I use isn't cutting it. Same goes for ".NET", which is over 30 some languages.
    - tkrajcar 15y ago
      Go ahead and write your self-congratulatory blogpost when Ruby "withers and dies". If HN is still around in 40-50 years, I'm sure it'll hit the frontpage.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    Much to my surprse, last time we had an Oracle sales team in they mentioned that Oracle is now in the business of NoSQL databases in additional to all the other database products they sell.
    - mhd 15y ago
      Isn't that basically Berkeley DB?
      - soldermont00 15y ago
        No, they make an actual NoSQL database now: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/overview/index.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/overview/...
        mhd 15y ago
        From the data sheet: "Oracle NoSQL Database is built upon the proven Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition high-availability storage engine". So it's BDBEE…
        slardat01 15y ago
        That is for the data store itself, and doesn't mean that the database is NoSQL or not. MemcacheDB for example is a NoSQL database that uses BerkeleyDB as a datastore. No different than you'd use InnoDB or RethinkDB with MySQL.
        andrewflnr 15y ago
        Is it significantly different from Riak? They seem very, very similar based on my superficial knowledge.
      - william42 15y ago
        It blows my mind that something called Berkeley DB is owned by Oracle. You'd think it'd be a UC Berkeley project.
mcs 15y ago
I'm curious if they tried to employ BigCouch, the dynamo-esque fork of CouchDB.
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  +1 - good idea. BigCouch is very nice, and based on Cloundant's experiences with it (they wrote it), it seems to scale to handle very large data customers.
  - jwhitlark 15y ago
    In my experience, bigcouch isn't mature enough for prime time, yet. Admin of it can get very tricky.
    - itaborai83 15y ago
      I'm curious. Would be willing to elaborate a little more?
fsvehla 15y ago
And they are building something else themselves? The hell
nirvana 15y ago
This article is a good example of how myths are created and engineering ignorance is perpetuated. CouchDB doesn't "scale"? If you're trying to "scale" with it, you don't know what you're doing in the first place. CouchDB federates. That's a wholly different thing. And in terms of federated databases, I challenge anyone to come up with one as good or better than CouchDB. (And if you do, it will be news to me, and I'll thank you profusely!) If its not obvious to you how to scale a federated database, then its not couchDB that can't scale, its you. (which is ok, everyone has to learn sometime, just don't put forth your lack of knowledge as proof of a weakness in an open source product!) Further, rather than just saying "We've got this great new invention-- a better technology, and we're moving to that!" the message seems to be "we are just wanting to re-invent the wheel, so to justify it, we have to make a negative claim about couchDB. Now, I expect some particular databases[1] fans to tell us, in the future, that "couchDB doesn't scale". Ironically, they're punting on CouchDB to use, among other possibilities, SQLite. To claim that "Scaling" is the problem is .... bad engineering form. CouchDB is great if you want to federate, have databases across the planet talking to each other and keeping in sync (its almost a turnkey CDN in a way), want to run a noSQL DB on a mobile device, etc. MongoDB is great if you care about SQL and single node performance and its complex distribution mechanism works for you. IF you want "scale" your choices are Riak or CouchDB-- for "scale" where homogenous distributed servers are the best solution. And of course there's Cassandra and graph databases, etc. which provide different solutions to scalability. IF you're serious about scalability, I strongly recommend people look at and choose Riak. I don't think anything out there touches it-- at least for the type of data I need. Cassandra and what I consider the "more complicated" alternatives might fit your particular problem type well. And if you think that its silly of me to recommend Riak then this is probably the case for you. But in terms of general databases, Riak seems to be pulling away from the pack. IF you're a fan of CouchDB, then BigCouch is a dynamo/Riak like version of it that I understand to be quite good. Plus, since its based on CouchDB, if the CouchDB way of doing queries (which is distinctly different from Riak) fits your way of working, then BigCouch deserves a look. But please, don't ever say "couchDB doesn't scale". If you do, really its that you don't scale, CouchDB is fine. [1] In an earlier edit I named a database. That was a mistake, not only is it bad form, I don't think that my characterization is appropriate at this time, as that database's fans are not as rabid as I imply. Apologies.
mbreese 15y ago
Here's the comment that John Lenton from Canonical made about this on /. http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2539244&cid=38138754 http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2539244&cid=38...
j45 15y ago
So.... old technologies suck because they're stable and scale, and new technologies suck because they're fun but aren't stable when they scale?
mattadams 15y ago
This might sound like a big deal but it shouldn't be a headliner. Whatever the details (and we don't have many) companies use and drop technologies on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes it's a good fit and sometimes it's not. Obviously in this case Couch didn't do everything Canonical needed (I think someone else actually pointed out that Canonical mentioned that their needs were unique). For every Canonical that drops Couch there will be 10s of other companies that adopt it because it's a good fit there. All this should reinforce is that every tool has a good fit and that smart implementors pick the one that jives best or moves to a better one when the opportunity presents itself.
Argorak 15y ago
I had the chance to speak to one of the Couchbase guys about Ubuntu One-like systems at Couchconf, and gained some (limited) knowledge. Be aware that some of this is guesswork, as I don't know Ubuntu One all to well. First things first: I think the failure of "really large systems" does not mean that the underlying technology is bad - most likely, it was a wrong pick for all the specific cases that this product needs. The number of variables is just so high that what looks like a good pick first, is bad in hindsight. As far as I know, Ubuntu One is one of the largest CouchDB based systems. (Zynga being the other) As far as I learned, it is an Authorization/Authentication issue, more than a performance issue. So, the proposed solution for such systems is to use (at least) one CouchDB database per user - CouchDB supports authentication per Database, so this usage is perfectly fine. So each user gets n Databases that are named after some clever scheme (lets say "{username}/{contacts}", couchdb allows "/" in database names). Actually, as far as I learned, CouchDB handles this without major problems. The data model is also great: you can replicate data between all the users cell phones, desktops etc. just by replicating the correct database. So far, no problems. The problem is sharing. So lets say, I want to share my business contacts with my co-founder. CouchDB only allows database-level authentication, so once I give my co-founder access, he will see all of my contacts. This includes the Replication API: once I have access, I can basically slurp the whole database (filters cannot be enforced). So, as you can manage a whole universe of databases, the solution here is simple: setup another database, say "{myuser}-{mycofounder}/shared_contacts", give both of us access and setup filtered push-replication in my database to the other database. So, now the source replicator can be trusted to be mine. So, suddenly, my nice "To the Cloud? Out of the door, left line, one database each"-system turns into a really big graph where every relationship between datasets is a database itself, along with many processes caring for moving data along those lines. Also, once my data is shared with my co-founder, its is basically public, as I readily copied it to him - deletion becomes a messy topic. (As long as the replication chain is intact, deletions are propagated, but honestly: who wants to support such a system?) So, along those lines, one big problem becomes obvious: CouchDB does not support document-level authentication. Considering the data model of CouchDB (basically, views are aggregations of the global document store), this is also a hard thing to do, because it means that every view has to be filtered per user. On the upside: the Couchbase also said that they would really like to support it.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
thedeuce 15y ago
Ubuntu and CouchDB; Two things I'm skeptical of.
bconway 15y ago
Original link: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-dropping-CouchDB-from-Ubuntu-One-1382809.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-dropping-Co...

110 points by patrickaljord 15y ago

ecommando 15y ago

Another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust, bamp bamp, another one bites the dust.

va_coder 15y ago
Mr. Ellison, you're the MS of databases. Don't rejoice too much.
- ecommando 15y ago
  Awww.. you mad... I'm so sick of hearing about all these "new" technologies that are so revolutionary, but can't hold a candle to postgres and memcache. Despite what the brochures tell you, a "degree" from DeVry and 3 hours in a Ruby book doesn't make an architect, and this is one of several "revolutionary technologies", like Ruby, that won't scale and will wither and die.
  - edu 15y ago
    Exactly, how does a programming language scale or not-scale? Ruby might be slower and hungrier (memory) than other languages but it's the applications that might or might not-scale.
    - j45 15y ago
      Assuming you have the most efficient code possible, the efficiency and speed of the interpreter can still affect the ability to scale an app. Another thought is, the interpreter may or may not have scaling / clustering available, be it through a built-in functionality or an external queue or something. Sometimes we have to code around interpreter/speed issues. I work in the JVM languages sometimes. I have to do things differently directly in Java if a particular JVM language I use isn't cutting it. Same goes for ".NET", which is over 30 some languages.
  - tkrajcar 15y ago
    Go ahead and write your self-congratulatory blogpost when Ruby "withers and dies". If HN is still around in 40-50 years, I'm sure it'll hit the frontpage.
- arethuza 15y ago
  Much to my surprse, last time we had an Oracle sales team in they mentioned that Oracle is now in the business of NoSQL databases in additional to all the other database products they sell.
  - mhd 15y ago
    Isn't that basically Berkeley DB?
    - soldermont00 15y ago
      No, they make an actual NoSQL database now: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/overview/index.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/overview/...
      - mhd 15y ago
        From the data sheet: "Oracle NoSQL Database is built upon the proven Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition high-availability storage engine". So it's BDBEE…
        slardat01 15y ago
        That is for the data store itself, and doesn't mean that the database is NoSQL or not. MemcacheDB for example is a NoSQL database that uses BerkeleyDB as a datastore. No different than you'd use InnoDB or RethinkDB with MySQL.
      - andrewflnr 15y ago
        Is it significantly different from Riak? They seem very, very similar based on my superficial knowledge.
    - william42 15y ago
      It blows my mind that something called Berkeley DB is owned by Oracle. You'd think it'd be a UC Berkeley project.

mcs 15y ago

I'm curious if they tried to employ BigCouch, the dynamo-esque fork of CouchDB.

mark_l_watson 15y ago
+1 - good idea. BigCouch is very nice, and based on Cloundant's experiences with it (they wrote it), it seems to scale to handle very large data customers.
- jwhitlark 15y ago
  In my experience, bigcouch isn't mature enough for prime time, yet. Admin of it can get very tricky.
  - itaborai83 15y ago
    I'm curious. Would be willing to elaborate a little more?

fsvehla 15y ago

And they are building something else themselves? The hell

nirvana 15y ago

This article is a good example of how myths are created and engineering ignorance is perpetuated. CouchDB doesn't "scale"? If you're trying to "scale" with it, you don't know what you're doing in the first place. CouchDB federates. That's a wholly different thing. And in terms of federated databases, I challenge anyone to come up with one as good or better than CouchDB. (And if you do, it will be news to me, and I'll thank you profusely!) If its not obvious to you how to scale a federated database, then its not couchDB that can't scale, its you. (which is ok, everyone has to learn sometime, just don't put forth your lack of knowledge as proof of a weakness in an open source product!) Further, rather than just saying "We've got this great new invention-- a better technology, and we're moving to that!" the message seems to be "we are just wanting to re-invent the wheel, so to justify it, we have to make a negative claim about couchDB. Now, I expect some particular databases[1] fans to tell us, in the future, that "couchDB doesn't scale". Ironically, they're punting on CouchDB to use, among other possibilities, SQLite. To claim that "Scaling" is the problem is .... bad engineering form. CouchDB is great if you want to federate, have databases across the planet talking to each other and keeping in sync (its almost a turnkey CDN in a way), want to run a noSQL DB on a mobile device, etc. MongoDB is great if you care about SQL and single node performance and its complex distribution mechanism works for you. IF you want "scale" your choices are Riak or CouchDB-- for "scale" where homogenous distributed servers are the best solution. And of course there's Cassandra and graph databases, etc. which provide different solutions to scalability. IF you're serious about scalability, I strongly recommend people look at and choose Riak. I don't think anything out there touches it-- at least for the type of data I need. Cassandra and what I consider the "more complicated" alternatives might fit your particular problem type well. And if you think that its silly of me to recommend Riak then this is probably the case for you. But in terms of general databases, Riak seems to be pulling away from the pack. IF you're a fan of CouchDB, then BigCouch is a dynamo/Riak like version of it that I understand to be quite good. Plus, since its based on CouchDB, if the CouchDB way of doing queries (which is distinctly different from Riak) fits your way of working, then BigCouch deserves a look. But please, don't ever say "couchDB doesn't scale". If you do, really its that you don't scale, CouchDB is fine. [1] In an earlier edit I named a database. That was a mistake, not only is it bad form, I don't think that my characterization is appropriate at this time, as that database's fans are not as rabid as I imply. Apologies.

mbreese 15y ago

Here's the comment that John Lenton from Canonical made about this on /. http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2539244&cid=38138754 http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2539244&cid=38...

j45 15y ago

So.... old technologies suck because they're stable and scale, and new technologies suck because they're fun but aren't stable when they scale?

mattadams 15y ago

This might sound like a big deal but it shouldn't be a headliner. Whatever the details (and we don't have many) companies use and drop technologies on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes it's a good fit and sometimes it's not. Obviously in this case Couch didn't do everything Canonical needed (I think someone else actually pointed out that Canonical mentioned that their needs were unique). For every Canonical that drops Couch there will be 10s of other companies that adopt it because it's a good fit there. All this should reinforce is that every tool has a good fit and that smart implementors pick the one that jives best or moves to a better one when the opportunity presents itself.

Argorak 15y ago

I had the chance to speak to one of the Couchbase guys about Ubuntu One-like systems at Couchconf, and gained some (limited) knowledge. Be aware that some of this is guesswork, as I don't know Ubuntu One all to well. First things first: I think the failure of "really large systems" does not mean that the underlying technology is bad - most likely, it was a wrong pick for all the specific cases that this product needs. The number of variables is just so high that what looks like a good pick first, is bad in hindsight. As far as I know, Ubuntu One is one of the largest CouchDB based systems. (Zynga being the other) As far as I learned, it is an Authorization/Authentication issue, more than a performance issue. So, the proposed solution for such systems is to use (at least) one CouchDB database per user - CouchDB supports authentication per Database, so this usage is perfectly fine. So each user gets n Databases that are named after some clever scheme (lets say "{username}/{contacts}", couchdb allows "/" in database names). Actually, as far as I learned, CouchDB handles this without major problems. The data model is also great: you can replicate data between all the users cell phones, desktops etc. just by replicating the correct database. So far, no problems. The problem is sharing. So lets say, I want to share my business contacts with my co-founder. CouchDB only allows database-level authentication, so once I give my co-founder access, he will see all of my contacts. This includes the Replication API: once I have access, I can basically slurp the whole database (filters cannot be enforced). So, as you can manage a whole universe of databases, the solution here is simple: setup another database, say "{myuser}-{mycofounder}/shared_contacts", give both of us access and setup filtered push-replication in my database to the other database. So, now the source replicator can be trusted to be mine. So, suddenly, my nice "To the Cloud? Out of the door, left line, one database each"-system turns into a really big graph where every relationship between datasets is a database itself, along with many processes caring for moving data along those lines. Also, once my data is shared with my co-founder, its is basically public, as I readily copied it to him - deletion becomes a messy topic. (As long as the replication chain is intact, deletions are propagated, but honestly: who wants to support such a system?) So, along those lines, one big problem becomes obvious: CouchDB does not support document-level authentication. Considering the data model of CouchDB (basically, views are aggregations of the global document store), this is also a hard thing to do, because it means that every view has to be filtered per user. On the upside: the Couchbase also said that they would really like to support it.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

thedeuce 15y ago

Ubuntu and CouchDB; Two things I'm skeptical of.

bconway 15y ago

Original link: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-dropping-CouchDB-from-Ubuntu-One-1382809.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-dropping-Co...