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The Slotted Counter Pattern

Blog post from PlanetScale

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
Sam Lambert
Word Count
759
Language
English
Hacker News Points
92
Summary

In a database, incrementing an INT column can lead to contention issues when multiple transactions try to update the counter simultaneously, causing deadlocks and increased query times. To avoid this, developers can use a separate table with a schema similar to `slotted_counters`, where each row represents a unique slot in the counter. This approach allows for parallel updates without clashing and reduces potential concurrency issues.