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I remember learning about FoundationDB a decade ago and being deeply impressed with what they built. Then it was acquired by Apple and went silent. Since then w

I remember learning about FoundationDB a decade ago and being deeply impressed with what they built. Then it was acquired by Apple and went silent. Since then we've seen an explosion in new database storage layers. I'm curious is FoundationDB still the new hotness or has it been replaced by newer better technologies?

fidotron 1y ago
Foundation is fundamental to iCloud at Apple, and is _something_ at Snowflake, among a few others. Recently DeepSeek used it for https://github.com/deepseek-ai/3FS https://github.com/deepseek-ai/3FS "The Fire-Flyer File System (3FS) is a high-performance distributed file system designed to address the challenges of AI training and inference workloads." I don't think that there's anything else quite the same, partly because it has some real oddities that manifest because of things like the transaction time limits. At Apple they worked around some of this with https://www.foundationdb.org/files/QuiCK.pdf https://www.foundationdb.org/files/QuiCK.pdf
- senderista 1y ago
  Snowflake uses FoundationDB for their metadata store and...something else which isn't public.
  - redwood 1y ago
    Hmm? A secret weapon to slow down Databricks?
  - parkerhiggins 1y ago
    ya here's the link explaining the metadata store: https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-snowflake-metadata-forward/ https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-sn...
- frakkingcylons 1y ago
  Tigris (an object storage provider, I have no affiliation) also uses FoundationDB for storing metadata: https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/concepts/architecture/#foundationdb https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/concepts/architecture/#found...
Dave_Rosenthal 1y ago
FoundationDB's original promise was to combine a distributed storage engine with stateless layers on top to expose a variety of useful data structures (including SQL). The company was acquired before it could release the layers part of that equation. Apple open-sourced the core storage engine a few years later so FDB has kind of had a second life since then. In that second life, the vast majority of the powerful databases around the industry built on FoundationDB have been built by companies making their own custom layers that are not public. This release is cool because it's a rare case that a company that has built a non-trivial layer on top of FDB is letting that source code be seen. The group to which the FoundationDB storage engine itself appeals is fairly narrow--you have to want to go deep enough to build your own database/datastore, but not so deep to want to start from scratch. But, for this group, there is still nothing like FoundationDB in the industry--a distributed ACID KV store of extreme performance and robustness. So, yes, it's still the hotness in that sense. (As others have mentioned, see e.g. Deepseek's recent reveal of their 3FS distributed filesystem which relies on FDB.)
- jbverschoor 1y ago
  AFAIK, the SQL layer was available and released
  - Dave_Rosenthal 1y ago
    There have been some 3rd party toy projects in the past years, but pretty sure nothing was ever released by FoundationDB/Apple relating to SQL (until this additional SQL interface on the Apple "record layer").
    - jbverschoor 1y ago
      2014: Beta launch of the SQL Layer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7593388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7593388 2014: Download SQL Layer: https://web.archive.org/web/20141209200002/https://foundationdb.com/layers/sql https://web.archive.org/web/20141209200002/https://foundatio... 2013: They talk about the SQL Layer: https://web.archive.org/web/20131220201001/https://foundationdb.com/our-solution#layer-level https://web.archive.org/web/20131220201001/https://foundatio... 2013: And someone can't start the SQL Layer on windows: https://web.archive.org/web/20131222063330/http://community.foundationdb.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131222063330/http://community....
jwr 1y ago
FoundationDB is pretty much the best distributed database out there, but it's more of a toolkit for building databases than a complete batteries-included database. I found that once I took the time to learn about FoundationDB and think about how to best integrate with it, the toolkit concept makes a lot of sense. Most people instinctively expect a database interface with a certain level of abstraction, and while that is nice to work with, it does not provide the advantages of a deeper integration. To take an example: FoundationDB itself has no indexing. It's a key-value store, but you get plenty of great tools for maintaining indices. That sounded strange to me, until I understood that now I can write my indexing functions in my app's language (Clojure in my case), using my model data. That is so much better than using a "database language" with a limited set of data types. Incidentally, I think that using SQL with FoundationDB is a waste, and I would not write a new app this way. Why would I want to talk to my database through a thin straw that mixes data with in-band commands? Since FoundationDB is hard to understand, there is (and will be) strong resistance to adoption. That's just how things are: we do not enjoy thinking too hard.
- umvi 1y ago
  > Since FoundationDB is hard to understand, there is (and will be) strong resistance to adoption. That's just how things are: we do not enjoy thinking too hard. More like: we all have limited time, and if it's hard to understand you are asking for a big upfront time investment for a thing that may not even be the best fit for your use case. Anything can be made easier to understand with the right abstractions. The theory of relativity was super hard to understand when it was first developed; you basically had to be an elite physicist. But now non-physicists can understand it at a high level thanks to YouTubers like veritasium and minute physics. Maybe FoundationDB just needs better marketing. Also: your description of FoundationDB reminds me of ZeroMQ, which basically just dumps MQ legos at your feet and tells you to build your own MQ system (as opposed to a batteries included solution like RabbitMQ)
- MarkMarine 1y ago
  Can we see some of your indexing code?
  - 1y ago
jen20 1y ago
It’s now been approximately 7 years since Apple open sourced FoundationDB. Note that it was closed source before the acquisition, which is often not appreciated.
olavgg 1y ago
There is a company delivering a data platform for the Industry 4.0 named Cognite based in Oslo, Norway that migrated from Google BigQuery to their own database on on top of FoundationDB. The video about it is available here: https://2023.javazone.no/program/85eae038-49b5-4f32-83c6-0779d252d0e9 https://2023.javazone.no/program/85eae038-49b5-4f32-83c6-077... After watching, my thoughts were; why didn't you just use Clickhouse?
jbverschoor 1y ago
I Thin that was more around 1.5 decades by now :). Yeah I was super enthusiastic about it. Seemed perfect. Back then I considered Riak, MongoDB, and things like Tokyo cabinet. FoundationDB to me is like Duke Nukem Forever. I don’t need it anymore. At least not for now

fidotron 1y ago

Foundation is fundamental to iCloud at Apple, and is _something_ at Snowflake, among a few others. Recently DeepSeek used it for https://github.com/deepseek-ai/3FS https://github.com/deepseek-ai/3FS "The Fire-Flyer File System (3FS) is a high-performance distributed file system designed to address the challenges of AI training and inference workloads." I don't think that there's anything else quite the same, partly because it has some real oddities that manifest because of things like the transaction time limits. At Apple they worked around some of this with https://www.foundationdb.org/files/QuiCK.pdf https://www.foundationdb.org/files/QuiCK.pdf

senderista 1y ago
Snowflake uses FoundationDB for their metadata store and...something else which isn't public.
- redwood 1y ago
  Hmm? A secret weapon to slow down Databricks?
- parkerhiggins 1y ago
  ya here's the link explaining the metadata store: https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-snowflake-metadata-forward/ https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/how-foundationdb-powers-sn...
frakkingcylons 1y ago
Tigris (an object storage provider, I have no affiliation) also uses FoundationDB for storing metadata: https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/concepts/architecture/#foundationdb https://www.tigrisdata.com/docs/concepts/architecture/#found...

Dave_Rosenthal 1y ago

FoundationDB's original promise was to combine a distributed storage engine with stateless layers on top to expose a variety of useful data structures (including SQL). The company was acquired before it could release the layers part of that equation. Apple open-sourced the core storage engine a few years later so FDB has kind of had a second life since then. In that second life, the vast majority of the powerful databases around the industry built on FoundationDB have been built by companies making their own custom layers that are not public. This release is cool because it's a rare case that a company that has built a non-trivial layer on top of FDB is letting that source code be seen. The group to which the FoundationDB storage engine itself appeals is fairly narrow--you have to want to go deep enough to build your own database/datastore, but not so deep to want to start from scratch. But, for this group, there is still nothing like FoundationDB in the industry--a distributed ACID KV store of extreme performance and robustness. So, yes, it's still the hotness in that sense. (As others have mentioned, see e.g. Deepseek's recent reveal of their 3FS distributed filesystem which relies on FDB.)

jbverschoor 1y ago
AFAIK, the SQL layer was available and released
- Dave_Rosenthal 1y ago
  There have been some 3rd party toy projects in the past years, but pretty sure nothing was ever released by FoundationDB/Apple relating to SQL (until this additional SQL interface on the Apple "record layer").
  - jbverschoor 1y ago
    2014: Beta launch of the SQL Layer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7593388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7593388 2014: Download SQL Layer: https://web.archive.org/web/20141209200002/https://foundationdb.com/layers/sql https://web.archive.org/web/20141209200002/https://foundatio... 2013: They talk about the SQL Layer: https://web.archive.org/web/20131220201001/https://foundationdb.com/our-solution#layer-level https://web.archive.org/web/20131220201001/https://foundatio... 2013: And someone can't start the SQL Layer on windows: https://web.archive.org/web/20131222063330/http://community.foundationdb.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131222063330/http://community....

jwr 1y ago

FoundationDB is pretty much the best distributed database out there, but it's more of a toolkit for building databases than a complete batteries-included database. I found that once I took the time to learn about FoundationDB and think about how to best integrate with it, the toolkit concept makes a lot of sense. Most people instinctively expect a database interface with a certain level of abstraction, and while that is nice to work with, it does not provide the advantages of a deeper integration. To take an example: FoundationDB itself has no indexing. It's a key-value store, but you get plenty of great tools for maintaining indices. That sounded strange to me, until I understood that now I can write my indexing functions in my app's language (Clojure in my case), using my model data. That is so much better than using a "database language" with a limited set of data types. Incidentally, I think that using SQL with FoundationDB is a waste, and I would not write a new app this way. Why would I want to talk to my database through a thin straw that mixes data with in-band commands? Since FoundationDB is hard to understand, there is (and will be) strong resistance to adoption. That's just how things are: we do not enjoy thinking too hard.

umvi 1y ago
> Since FoundationDB is hard to understand, there is (and will be) strong resistance to adoption. That's just how things are: we do not enjoy thinking too hard. More like: we all have limited time, and if it's hard to understand you are asking for a big upfront time investment for a thing that may not even be the best fit for your use case. Anything can be made easier to understand with the right abstractions. The theory of relativity was super hard to understand when it was first developed; you basically had to be an elite physicist. But now non-physicists can understand it at a high level thanks to YouTubers like veritasium and minute physics. Maybe FoundationDB just needs better marketing. Also: your description of FoundationDB reminds me of ZeroMQ, which basically just dumps MQ legos at your feet and tells you to build your own MQ system (as opposed to a batteries included solution like RabbitMQ)
MarkMarine 1y ago
Can we see some of your indexing code?
- 1y ago

jen20 1y ago

It’s now been approximately 7 years since Apple open sourced FoundationDB. Note that it was closed source before the acquisition, which is often not appreciated.

olavgg 1y ago

There is a company delivering a data platform for the Industry 4.0 named Cognite based in Oslo, Norway that migrated from Google BigQuery to their own database on on top of FoundationDB. The video about it is available here: https://2023.javazone.no/program/85eae038-49b5-4f32-83c6-0779d252d0e9 https://2023.javazone.no/program/85eae038-49b5-4f32-83c6-077... After watching, my thoughts were; why didn't you just use Clickhouse?

jbverschoor 1y ago

I Thin that was more around 1.5 decades by now :). Yeah I was super enthusiastic about it. Seemed perfect. Back then I considered Riak, MongoDB, and things like Tokyo cabinet. FoundationDB to me is like Duke Nukem Forever. I don’t need it anymore. At least not for now