[HN Gopher] XTDB 2.x Early Access
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       XTDB 2.x Early Access
        
       Author : gemstones
       Score  : 85 points
       Date   : 2023-04-27 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.xtdb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.xtdb.com)
        
       | kevinmershon wrote:
       | We use XTDB 1 and have a multi replica production instance with
       | about 600GB of data at ~100 million transactions. The biggest
       | problem we have is with minor versions bumping the underlying
       | RocksDB i dex version, requiring a full reindex of the main
       | "golden" data store taking days to weeks.
       | 
       | AFAIK this is not solved in XTDB 1. I'm hoping XTDB 2 provides a
       | better upgrade path for modestly sized databases like ours.
        
         | refset wrote:
         | XTDB 2 will compute and maintain incremental indexes on-the-fly
         | based on the raw data, so index updates will present far less
         | operational impact. This also means the transaction log is now
         | ~ephemeral in the new architecture (no more event-sourcing-
         | style replays required, ever).
        
           | kevinmershon wrote:
           | That is incredibly exciting! Glad to hear it.
        
       | vosper wrote:
       | My understanding is the XTDB is either a fork of Datomic, or was
       | inspired by it? I suppose it's timely, given the top story on HN
       | right now is "Datomic is Free" [0]
       | 
       | Is there anyone who's familiar with both and would like to share
       | their thoughts on the two?
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35727967
        
         | newlisp wrote:
         | They have completely different data models though, XTDB is a
         | schemaless document data store, think mongodb but with
         | SQL/Datalog querying and bi-temporality.
         | 
         | Datomic's data model is something they call the 'universal
         | schema' where you just specify the attributes and then create
         | entities however you like from them. Datomic aligns more with
         | how you structure data in Clojure, avoiding the impedance
         | mismatch.
        
         | refset wrote:
         | Datomic's "immutable database + Datalog" was definitely the
         | biggest source of inspiration but XTDB has a lot of differences
         | - I wrote this FAQ entry up a few years back:
         | https://docs.xtdb.com/resources/faq/#comparisons (note this
         | comparison is for XTDB 1.x and Datomic On-Prem only, so needs
         | revisiting!)
         | 
         | Arguably the biggest difference is that XTDB has a schemaless,
         | dynamic core. Having a sane schema is of course important when
         | building complex things, but we believe that the flexibility to
         | experiment with schema (fully) in userspace is essential for
         | moving the state of the art forwards. For instance a lots
         | Clojure users these days prefer relying on
         | https://github.com/metosin/malli for _all_ their schema needs.
        
       | baq wrote:
       | > XTDB is a bitemporal and dynamic relational database for SQL
       | 
       | You have my attention. I actually raised an eyebrow reading that,
       | last time this happened was when ChatGPT was released.
       | 
       | Temporal is a world of pain in SQL, bitemporal... nice.
       | 
       | edit: for those who haven't heard what bitemporal is, Wikipedia
       | has an example:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_database#Using_two_ax...
        
       | seabass-labrax wrote:
       | XTDB is a very interesting database to me. Not only is it
       | distributed, but the 'bi-temporality' which is mentioned on this
       | page means that it has essentially a built-in audit trail
       | mechanism. I'm working on writing an RDF library for Clojure, and
       | am looking forward to seeing whether XTDB really is as good as an
       | RDF datastore as I suspect it is!
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-27 23:00 UTC)