Relational databases provide durable transactional systems for storing data. The relational model has existed for decades, but the requirements for a relational database have changed.

Modern applications have requirements for high volumes of data that do not fit onto a single machine. When a database gets too big to fit on a single machine, that database needs to be sharded into smaller subsets of the data. These database shards are spread across multiple machines, and as the database grows, the database can be resharded to scale to even more machines.

To ensure durability, a database needs to be replicated. The database needs to be able to survive any single machine losing power or getting destroyed.

Sharding and replication allow a relational database to be scalable, durable, and highly available. There are many ways to build sharding and replication into a database. Karthik Ranganathan and Sid Choudhury are engineers with YugabyteDB, a distributed SQL database.

In today’s episode, we discuss the modern requirements of a distributed SQL database, and compare the applications of distributed SQL to those of other systems such as Cassandra and Hadoop. We also talk through the competitive market of cloud-based distributed SQL providers such as Google Cloud Spanner and Amazon Aurora. YugabyteDB is an open source database that competes with these other relational databases. Full disclosure: YugabyteDB is a sponsor of Software Engineering Daily.

Sponsorship inquiries: [email protected]

Announcements

• We are hiring a content writer and also an operations lead. Both of these are part-time positions working closely with Jeff and Erika. If you are interested in working with us, send an email to [email protected].
• We will be at KubeCon San Diego 2019, and AWS re:Invent Las Vegas. We are planning a meetup at re:Invent on Wednesday December 4.

The post Distributed SQL with Karthik Ranganathan and Sid Choudhury appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.