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I had understood FoundationDB to be more akin to a storage engine (e.g. a sub-component of a DBMS) than a full-on DBMS. Was I misunderstanding? If so I bet a lo

I had understood FoundationDB to be more akin to a storage engine (e.g. a sub-component of a DBMS) than a full-on DBMS. Was I misunderstanding? If so I bet a lot of people have this understanding, going back to your point on the web site/general sentiment in the zeitgeist not necessarily reflecting what they are. Can you share any more detail? Are you saying there are companies that build software on top of FoundationDB as their primary data store? or are those companies building software around FoundationDB that in turn presents as more of a data store in the traditional sense?

saled 3y ago
Snowflake uses foundationdb as their metadata store to find files in S3, though I believe the actual queries are run on separate nodes. https://www.snowflake.com/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-snowflake-metadata-forward/ https://www.snowflake.com/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-snowf... But yeah you're right for the most part. Turns out pretty much any database can be written in terms of transactions of KV pairs, which is what foundationdb gives you, so it means you can write your database query layer as a stateless, scalable service. There have been attempts to write a SQL RDMS layer for it but it isn't maintained.
jwr 3y ago
It's more of a database-building toolkit than a storage engine. What you get is a distributed KV store with a strict serializable consistency model (see https://jepsen.io/consistency https://jepsen.io/consistency) and very interesting versionstamp functionality. What you do not get is a "query language" or indexing. Yes, there are companies that use FoundationDB as their primary data store. It makes a lot of sense to integrate it directly with the application rather than go through additional layers and a "query language". I am working on adapting my app to use it, and so far very happy with the results.
- redwood 3y ago
  Thanks for the helpful clarification and very interesting

saled 3y ago

Snowflake uses foundationdb as their metadata store to find files in S3, though I believe the actual queries are run on separate nodes. https://www.snowflake.com/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-snowflake-metadata-forward/ https://www.snowflake.com/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-snowf... But yeah you're right for the most part. Turns out pretty much any database can be written in terms of transactions of KV pairs, which is what foundationdb gives you, so it means you can write your database query layer as a stateless, scalable service. There have been attempts to write a SQL RDMS layer for it but it isn't maintained.

jwr 3y ago

It's more of a database-building toolkit than a storage engine. What you get is a distributed KV store with a strict serializable consistency model (see https://jepsen.io/consistency https://jepsen.io/consistency) and very interesting versionstamp functionality. What you do not get is a "query language" or indexing. Yes, there are companies that use FoundationDB as their primary data store. It makes a lot of sense to integrate it directly with the application rather than go through additional layers and a "query language". I am working on adapting my app to use it, and so far very happy with the results.

redwood 3y ago
Thanks for the helpful clarification and very interesting