June 2020 Summaries

CockroachDB has added disk spilling to its vectorized execution engine, enabling it to execute memory-intensive queries when there is not enough memory available. The new feature allows the engine to fall back to disk for certain types of queries, improving analytical capabilities in CockroachDB. Disk spilling is implemented using a single building block that supports various on-disk algorithms, including sorts, hash joins, and merge joins. With this addition, the experimental_on vectorize mode has been renamed to on, signifying that the vectorized execution engine is now ready for production use.

The healthcare industry relies heavily on database solutions for protecting sensitive data and ensuring consistent performance. For decades, Oracle was the go-to choice due to its consistency and ability to handle complex backend systems. However, with the rise of distributed SQL databases like CockroachDB, healthcare companies now have a more flexible option that offers high levels of consistency while supporting horizontal scaling. This allows for easier migration to cloud environments, expansion into new regions, and greater control over when to scale without manual sharding burdens.

CockroachDB has introduced SELECT FOR UPDATE to simplify handling of client-side transaction retry errors and improve performance. This feature allows applications to take explicit control of row-level locking on a per-statement basis, reducing the need for developers to implement retry-loops for contended transactions. Benchmarking with YCSB (Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark) showed that enabling SELECT FOR UPDATE in CockroachDB 20.1 improved throughput, tail latency, and reduced the number of transaction retry errors compared to v19.2.

Cockroach Labs has announced full compatibility with Active Record for Ruby developers. This is the ORM that powers Ruby on Rails, one of the most popular open-source development frameworks for web applications. The company aims to make CockroachDB a joy to develop for and therefore decided to provide support for Ruby on Rails. A tutorial has been created by their docs team to guide developers in building a Hello World App with Active Record and CockroachDB.

CockroachDB 20.1 introduces support for nested transactions, a SQL feature that simplifies the work of programmers of certain client applications. Nested transactions are additional transactions that occur within a regular transaction or other nested transactions, like Russian dolls. They are invisible to concurrent clients due to the atomicity and isolation of their surrounding, "outermost" transaction. Nested transactions have been invented for the benefit of software engineers of client applications in component-based design. CockroachDB's support for nested transactions is limited in three noticeable ways: locking semantics, canceling schema changes, and recovering from serializability conflicts.

CockroachDB offers features that make it easy to support applications in multiple regions. The new feature, Online Primary Key Changes, allows users to upgrade their application from single-region to multi-region with zero downtime. This blog post discusses the use cases and benefits of this feature. It provides examples on how to modify a primary key and demonstrates an entire MovR workload conversion to a multi-region cluster. The feature helps developers create multi-region applications, allowing them to grow their application from single-region to multi-region without downtime.

Cockroach Labs has published a research paper on their distributed SQL database, CockroachDB. The paper, "CockroachDB: The Resilient Geo-Distributed SQL Database," presents the design of CockroachDB and its novel transaction model that supports consistent geo-distributed transactions on commodity hardware. It also describes how CockroachDB replicates and distributes data to achieve fault tolerance and high performance, as well as how its distributed SQL layer automatically scales with the size of the database cluster while providing the standard SQL interface that users expect. The paper is available for download and will be presented at SIGMOD 2020 by first author Rebecca Taft.

Cockroach Labs, a company that provides distributed SQL database technology, is taking action to create positive change in response to recent events and the ongoing need for police reform and racial justice. The company has instituted Connect and Contribute Days, dedicated time for employees to engage with and impact their communities. On June 5th, Cockroach Labs had its first Connect and Contribute Day, and these days will be a part of the company's ongoing commitment to supporting employee contributions in their personal and professional lives. The company encourages its employees to stand against hate, violence, and racism by taking decisive action and sharing their efforts on social media.