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Database School
Try Hard Studios
24 episodes
21 hours ago
Join database educator Aaron Francis as he gets schooled by database professionals.
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Technology
Education
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All content for Database School is the property of Try Hard Studios and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Join database educator Aaron Francis as he gets schooled by database professionals.
Show more...
Technology
Education
Episodes (20/24)
Database School
Building an S3 Competitor with Tigris CEO Ovais Tariq

Aaron talks with Ovais Tariq, co-founder and CEO of Tigris Data and former Uber engineer who helped scale one of the world’s largest distributed systems. They discuss Uber’s hyperscale infrastructure, what it takes to build an S3-compatible object store from scratch, and how distributed storage is evolving for the AI era.

Follow Ovais:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ovaistariq
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ovaistariq
Tigris: https://www.tigrisdata.com

Follow Aaron:
Twitter/X:  https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis 
Database School: https://databaseschool.com
Database School YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UCT3XN4RtcFhmrWl8tf_o49g  (Subscribe today)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction and overview of the episode
01:35 - Ovais’s background and introduction to Tigris
03:00 - Building distributed databases and infrastructure at Uber
06:00 - Uber’s in-house philosophy and massive data scale
09:00 - Hardware, power density, and talking to chip manufacturers
12:00 - Learning curve of scaling hardware and data centers
14:00 - The Halloween outage and lessons from Cassandra
16:00 - Building data centers across the world for Uber
17:00 - Founding Tigris and the vision for global storage
18:45 - How Tigris differs from AWS S3
20:00 - The architecture of Tigris: caching, metadata, and replication
32:00 - Why Tigris uses FoundationDB and its reliability
36:00 - Managing global and regional metadata
38:00 - How Tigris dynamically moves and caches data
41:30 - Building their own data centers and backbone
43:45 - Specialized storage for AI workloads
46:00 - Small file optimization and real-world use cases
49:00 - Snapshots, forking, and agentic AI workflows
51:00 - How AI transformed Tigris’s customer base
54:00 - Partnership with Fly.io and the distributed cloud ecosystem
57:00 - Growth, customers, and focus on media and AI companies
59:00 - What’s next for Tigris: distributed file system plans
1:01:00 - Technical challenges and building trust in durability
1:03:00 - Call to action: try Tigris and upcoming snapshot feature
1:05:00 - Advice for engineers leaving big companies to start something new
1:06:30 - Where to find Ovais online and closing remarks

Show more...
21 hours ago
1 hour 7 minutes

Database School
Rewriting SQLite from prison with Preston Thorpe

In this episode of Database School, Aaron talks with Preston Thorpe, a senior engineer at Turso who is currently incarcerated, about his incredible journey from prison to rewriting SQLite in Rust. They dive deep into concurrent writes, MVCC, and the challenges of building a new database from scratch while discussing redemption, resilience, and raw technical brilliance.

Follow Preston and Turso:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/PThorpe92
Preston's Blog: https://pthorpe92.dev
GitHub: https://github.com/PThorpe92
Turso: https://turso.tech

Follow Aaron:
Twitter/X:  https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis 
Database School: https://databaseschool.com
Database School YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UCT3XN4RtcFhmrWl8tf_o49g  (Subscribe today)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro and Preston’s story
02:13 - How Preston learned programming in prison
06:06 - Making his parents proud and turning life around
09:01 - Getting his first job at Unlock Labs
10:47 - Discovering Turso and contributing to open source
12:53 - From contributor to senior engineer at Turso
22:27 - What Preston works on inside Turso
24:00 - Challenges of rewriting SQLite in Rust
26:00 - Why concurrent writes matter
27:57 - How Turso implements concurrent writes
35:02 - Maintaining SQLite compatibility
37:03 - MVCC explained simply
43:40 - How Turso handles MVCC and logging
46:03 - Open source contributions and performance work
46:23 - Implementing live materialized views
50:55 - The DBSP paper and incremental computation
52:55 - Sync and offline capabilities in Turso
56:45 - Change data capture and future possibilities
1:02:01 - Implementing foreign keys and fuzz testing
1:06:02 - Rebuilding SQLite’s virtual machine
1:08:10 - The quirks of SQLite’s codebase
1:10:47 - Preston’s upcoming release and what’s next
1:14:02 - Gratitude, reflection, and closing thoughts

Show more...
1 week ago
1 hour 18 minutes

Database School
A million transactions per second: building TigerBeetle with Joran Greef

In this episode, Aaron talks with Joran Greef, CEO and creator of TigerBeetle, the world’s first financial transactions database. Joran takes us on a deep dive of on how TigerBeetle brings double-entry accounting principles directly into the database layer to achieve extreme correctness, performance, and fault tolerance at scale.

Follow Joran and TigerBeetle:
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/jorandirkgreef
Website: https://tigerbeetle.com
GitHub: https://github.com/tigerbeetle/tigerbeetle
Tiger Style: https://github.com/tigerbeetle/tigerbeetle/blob/main/docs/TIGER_STYLE.md
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UC3TlyQ3h6lC_jSWust2leGg 

Follow Aaron:
Twitter/X:  https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis 
Database School: https://databaseschool.com
Database School YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UCT3XN4RtcFhmrWl8tf_o49g  (Subscribe today)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction and crossover between accounting and databases
01:50 - Meet Joran Greef and the origins of TigerBeetle
02:55 - What makes TigerBeetle different from general purpose databases
04:38 - The founding story and the 5,000-year history of transactions
07:42 - How modern commerce became highly transactional
10:06 - Recognizing the limits of general purpose databases
13:18 - From distributed systems to payment infrastructure
17:01 - Discovering bottlenecks in traditional database performance
19:58 - Why traditional databases can’t scale for microtransactions
23:05 - Introducing double-entry accounting concepts
25:20 - How double-entry accounting mirrors database design
31:35 - Modeling ledgers and event sourcing in Tiger Beetle
35:02 - Why TigerBeetle outperforms Postgres and MySQL
40:05 - Batching transactions for massive throughput
47:09 - Client-side batching and zero-copy efficiency
50:04 - Handling contention and concurrency internally
56:03 - Ensuring correctness and atomicity in transactions
57:17 - Designing for mission-critical systems and reliability
1:00:50 - Building safety through deterministic simulation testing
1:04:55 - Detecting and recovering from storage faults
1:10:00 - How TigerBeetle prevents data corruption
1:17:01 - Distributed replication and self-healing data
1:20:08 - Who’s using TigerBeetle and how it’s structured as a company
1:24:01 - How to learn more and get involved with TigerBeetle
1:26:15 - Closing thoughts and where to find Joran online

Show more...
2 weeks ago
1 hour 28 minutes

Database School
PlanetScale Postgres with CEO Sam Lambert

Sam Lambert, my former boss at PlanetScale, talks to me about PlanetScale moving from a MySQL company to now also having a Postgres offering. Sam shares why PlanetScale decided to move to Postgres, how MySQL and Postgres are different at a technical level, and how the change has impacted the company culture. Stay to the end for a special surprise!

PlanetScale Metal Episode: https://youtu.be/3r9PsVwGkg4
Join the waitlist to be notified of the MySQL for Developers release on Database School: 
https://databaseschool.com/mysql

Follow Sam: 
PlanetScale: https://planetscale.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/isamlambert

Follow Aaron:
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.
Database School: https://databaseschool.com
Database School YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UCT3XN4RtcFhmrWl8tf_o49g (Subscribe today)

Chapters:
00:00 - Inaugural episode on this channel
01:46 - Introducing Sam Lambert and his background
03:04 - How PlanetScale built on MySQL and Vitess
06:10 - Explaining the layers of PlanetScale’s architecture
09:57 - Node lifecycles, failover, and operational discipline
12:02 - How Vitess makes sharding work
14:21 - PlanetScale’s edge network and resharding
19:02 - Why downtime is unacceptable at scale
20:04 - From Metal to Postgres: the decision process
23:06 - Why Postgres vibes matter for startups
27:04 - How PlanetScale adapted its stack for Postgres
34:38 - Entering the Postgres ecosystem and extensions
41:02 - Permissions, security, and reliability trade-offs
45:04 - Building Ni: a Vitess-style system for Postgres
53:33 - Why PlanetScale insists on control for reliability
1:02:05 - Competing in the broader Postgres landscape
1:08:33 - Why PlanetScale stays “just a database”
1:12:33 - What GA means for Postgres at PlanetScale
1:17:43 - Call to action for new Postgres users
1:18:49 - Surprise!
1:22:21 - Wrap-up and where to find Sam

Show more...
1 month ago
1 hour 6 minutes

Database School
The database for all your AI needs

Marcel Kornacker, the creator of Apache Impala and co-creator of Apache Parquet, joins me to talk about his latest project: Pixeltable, a multimodal AI database that combines structured and unstructured data with rich, Python-native workflows.


From ingestion to vector search, transcription to snapshots, Pixeltable eliminates painful data plumbing for modern AI teams.



Follow Marcel

  • Pixeltable: https://pixeltable.com
  • Pixeltable GitHub: https://github.com/pixeltable/pixeltable
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelkornacker



Follow Aaron

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
  • Website: https://aaronfrancis.com – find articles, podcasts, courses, and more
  • Database School: https://databaseschool.com



Chapters

  • 0:00 – Introduction
  • 0:20 – Meet Marcel Kornacker
  • 1:19 – Early career and grad school in databases
  • 2:12 – Joining Google and building F1
  • 3:42 – How F1 used Spanner at Google
  • 4:01 – Starting Apache Impala at Cloudera
  • 6:02 – Why SQL still matters
  • 7:29 – What keeps Marcel fascinated with databases
  • 9:37 – The “SQL is dead” waves and shift to AI
  • 10:21 – Observing pain points in computer vision pipelines
  • 13:02 – Multimodal data challenges and the idea for Pixeltable
  • 16:10 – How Pixeltable handles transformations with computed columns
  • 26:29 – Example: processing video, audio, and transcripts in Pixeltable
  • 33:12 – DAG execution and parallelism explained
  • 37:00 – Transactional guarantees in Pixeltable
  • 39:00 – Iterators and chunking data for search
  • 42:26 – Using embeddings and semantic search
  • 47:05 – Updating data and incremental recomputation
  • 50:06 – Thoughts on RAG and hybrid search
  • 53:14 – Real-world use cases and dataset curation
  • 57:00 – Example: labeling food waste on cruise ships
  • 1:02:00 – Labeling workflows and syncing annotations
  • 1:02:41 – Pixeltable’s roadmap and cloud vision
  • 1:07:10 – How to get involved with Pixeltable
  • 1:09:03 – Closing and where to find Marcel
Show more...
1 month ago
1 hour

Database School
Sharding Postgres without extensions with PgDog founder, Lev Kokotov

I chat with Lev Kokotov to talk about building PgDog, an open-source sharding solution for Postgres that sits outside the database. Lev shares the journey from creating PgCat to launching PgDog through YC, the technical challenges of sharding, and why he believes scaling Postgres shouldn’t require extensions or rewrites.


Follow Lev:

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/levpgdog
  • PgDog: https://pgdog.dev


Follow Aaron:

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
  • Website: https://aaronfrancis.com — find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.
  • Database School: https://databaseschool.com



Chapters

  • 00:00 - Intro
  • 01:27 - Lev’s self-taught to computer science degree journey
  • 04:50 - Transition to Postgres discussion
  • 05:24 - History of PgCat
  • 07:06 - What PG Cat does and key features
  • 08:59 - Why Lev built PgCat instead of extending PG Bouncer
  • 10:06 - PG Cat’s current status and usage
  • 12:20 - Moving from PgCat to PgDog
  • 13:09 - Applying to YC as a solo founder
  • 16:24 - YC pitch: the market gap for Postgres sharding
  • 18:52 - High-level overview of PgDog
  • 23:32 - Why PgDog is not an extension
  • 25:57 - When to build Postgres extensions vs standalone tools
  • 27:49 - PgDog architecture and query parsing
  • 30:39 - Handling cross-shard queries and current capabilities
  • 33:47 - How PgDog shards an existing large Postgres database
  • 36:37 - Parallel replication streams for faster sharding
  • 39:07 - Alternate resharding approaches
  • 42:52 - Where PgDog draws the orchestration line
  • 44:00 - Vision for PgDog Cloud vs bring-your-own-database
  • 46:47 - Company status: first hire, design partners, and production use
  • 50:45 - How deploys work for customers
  • 52:20 - Importance of building closely with design partners
  • 54:05 - Paid design partnerships and initial deployments
  • 56:23 - Benefit of sitting outside Postgres for compatibility
  • 58:32 - Near-term roadmap and long-term vision
  • 1:01:03 - Where to find Lev online
Show more...
2 months ago
48 minutes

Database School
Rewriting SQLite from scratch (yes, really)

Want to learn more about SQLite?  
Check out my course on SQLite: https://highperformancesqlite.com/?ref=yt  

In this episode of Database School, I chat with Glauber Costa, CEO of Turso, about their audacious decision to rewrite SQLite from the ground up.  

We cover the technical motivations, open contribution philosophy, and how deterministic simulation testing is unlocking new levels of reliability.  

Get your free SQLite reference guide: https://highperformancesqlite.com/products/sqlite-reference-guide.  

Follow Glauber:  
Twitter: https://twitter.com/glcst  
Turso: https://tur.so/af  

Follow Aaron:  
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis  
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis  
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.  

Database school: https://databaseschool.com  

Chapters:  
00:00 - Intro to guest Glauber Costa  
00:58 - Glauber's background and path to databases  
02:23 - Moving to Texas and life changes  
05:32 - The origin story of Turso  
07:55 - Why fork SQLite in the first place?  
10:28 - SQLite’s closed contribution model  
12:00 - Launching libSQL as an open contribution fork  
13:43 - Building Turso Cloud for serverless SQLite  
14:57 - Limitations of forking SQLite  
17:00 - Deciding to rewrite SQLite from scratch  
19:08 - Branding mistakes and naming decisions  
22:29 - Differentiating Turso (the database) from Turso Cloud  
24:00 - Technical barriers that led to the rewrite  
28:00 - Why libSQL plateaued for deeper improvements  
30:14 - Big business partner request leads to deeper rethink  
31:23 - The rewrite begins  
33:36 - Early community traction and GitHub stars  
35:00 - Hiring contributors from the community  
36:58 - Reigniting the original vision  
39:40 - Turso’s core business thesis  
42:00 - Fully pivoting the company around the rewrite  
45:16 - How GitHub contributors signal business alignment  
47:10 - SQLite’s rock-solid rep and test suite challenges  
49:00 - The magic of deterministic simulation testing  
53:00 - How the simulator injects and replays IO failures  
56:00 - The role of property-based testing  
58:54 - Offering cash for bugs that break data integrity  
1:01:05 - Deterministic testing vs traditional testing  
1:03:44 - What it took to release Turso Alpha  
1:05:50 - Encouraging contributors with real incentives  
1:07:50 - How to get involved and contribute  
1:20:00 - Upcoming roadmap: indexes, CDC, schema changes  
1:23:40 - Final thoughts and where to find Turso

Show more...
3 months ago
1 hour 17 minutes

Database School
Vitess for Postgres, with the co-founder of PlanetScale

Sugu Sougoumarane, co-creator of Vitess and co-founder of PlanetScale, joins me to talk about his time scaling YouTube’s database infrastructure, building Vitess, and his latest project bringing sharding to Postgres with Multigres.


This was a fun conversation with technical deep-dives, lessons from building distributed systems, and why he’s joining Supabase to tackle this next big challenge.


Sugu’s Vitess videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yOjF7qhmyY&list=PLA9CMdLbfL5zHg3oapO0HvtPfVx6_iJy6


The big announcement:

https://supabase.com/blog/multigres-vitess-for-postgres


Database School:

https://databaseschool.com


Follow Sugu:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ssougou

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sougou


Follow Aaron:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis

Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.


Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

1:38 - The birth of Vitess at YouTube

3:19 - The spreadsheet that started it all

6:17 - Intelligent query parsing and connection pooling

9:46 - Preventing outages with query limits

13:42 - Growing Vitess beyond a connection pooler

16:01 - Choosing Go for Vitess

20:00 - The life of a query in Vitess

23:12 - How sharding worked at YouTube

26:03 - Hiding the keyspace ID from applications

33:02 - How Vitess evolved to hide complexity

36:05 - Founding PlanetScale & maintaining Vitess solo

39:22 - Sabbatical, rediscovering empathy, and volunteering

42:08 - The itch to bring Vitess to Postgres

44:50 - Why Multigres focuses on compatibility and usability

49:00 - The Postgres codebase vs. MySQL codebase

52:06 - Joining Supabase & building the Multigres team

54:20 - Starting Multigres from scratch with lessons from Vitess

57:02 - MVP goals for Multigres

1:01:02 - Integration with Supabase & database branching

1:05:21 - Sugu’s dream for Multigres

1:09:05 - Small teams, hiring, and open positions

1:11:07 - Community response to Multigres announcement

1:12:31 - Where to find Sugu

Show more...
4 months ago
1 hour 7 minutes

Database School
PlanetScale Metal

In this episode, I chat with Richard Crowley from PlanetScale about their new offering: PlanetScale Metal.

We dive deep into the performance and reliability trade-offs of EBS vs. locally attached NVMe storage,

and how Metal delivers game-changing speed for MySQL workloads.


Links:

  • Database School: https://databaseschool.com
  • PlanetScale: https://planetscale.com
  • PlanetScale Metal: https://planetscale.com/blog/announcing-metal


Follow Richard:

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/rcrowley
  • Website: https://rcrowley.org


Follow Aaron:

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
  • Website: https://aaronfrancis.com — find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.


Chapters:

00:00 - Intro: What is PlanetScale Metal?

00:39 - Meet Richard Crowley

01:33 - What is Vitess and how does it work?

03:00 - Where PlanetScale fits into the picture

09:03 - Why EBS is the default and its trade-offs

13:03 - How PlanetScale handles durability without EBS

16:03 - The engineering work behind PlanetScale Metal

22:00 - Deep dive into backups, restores, and availability math

25:03 - How PlanetScale replaces instances safely

27:11 - Performance gains with Metal: Latency and IOPS explained

32:03 - Database workloads that truly benefit from Metal

39:10 - The myth of the infinite cloud

41:08 - How PlanetScale plans for capacity

43:02 - Multi-tenant vs. PlanetScale Managed

44:02 - Who should use Metal and when?

46:05 - Pricing trade-offs and when Metal becomes cheaper

48:27 - Scaling vertically vs. sharding

49:57 - What’s next for PlanetScale Metal?

53:32 - Where to learn more

Show more...
4 months ago
50 minutes

Database School
From Prisma Founder to LiveStore: Building local-first apps with Johannes Schickling

Johannes Schickling, original founder of Prisma, joins me to talk about LiveStore, his ambitious local-first data layer designed to rethink how we build apps from the data layer up.


We dive deep into event sourcing, syncing with SQLite, and why this approach might power the next generation of reactive apps.


🔗 Links Mentioned


Want to learn more about SQLite?

Check out my SQLite course:

https://highperformancesqlite.com/?ref=yt


LiveStore

Website: https://livestore.dev

Repo: https://github.com/livestorejs

Discord: https://discord.gg/RbMcjUAPd7


Follow Johannes

Twitter: https://www.x.com/schickling

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schickling

Website: https://www.schickling.dev

Podcast: https://www.localfirst.fm


Follow Aaron

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis

Website: https://aaronfrancis.com — find articles, podcasts, courses, and more


Database School

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI72dgeNJtzqElnNB6sQoAn2R-F3Vqm15

Audio only: https://databaseschool.transistor.fm


🕒 Chapters


00:00 - Intro to Johannes

01:00 - From Prisma to LiveStore

03:00 - Discovering local-first through Riffle

05:00 - What is local-first and who is it for?

07:00 - Why local-first is gaining popularity

10:00 - The inspiration from apps like Linear

13:00 - Gaps in local-first tooling in 2020

16:00 - Social apps vs. user-centric apps

18:00 - Distributed systems and why they’re hard

21:00 - The value of embracing local-first

24:00 - What LiveStore is and what it’s not

26:00 - Event sourcing as the core of LiveStore

30:00 - Benefits of event sourcing for apps

33:00 - Schema changes and time travel via events

37:00 - Materializers and how they work

43:00 - Syncing data across clients and devices

48:00 - Sync servers and cross-tab communication

54:00 - Architecture choices and dev tooling

59:00 - State of the project and future vision

1:06:00 - How to get involved

Show more...
5 months ago
1 hour 31 minutes

Database School
How Durable Objects and D1 Work: A Deep Dive with Cloudflare’s Josh Howard

Josh Howard, Senior Engineering Manager at Cloudflare, joins me to explain how Durable Objects and D1 work under the hood—and why Cloudflare’s approach to stateful serverless infrastructure is so unique. We get into V8 isolates, replication models, routing strategies, and even upcoming support for containers. Want to learn more about SQLite? Check out my SQLite course: https://highperformancesqlite.com/?ref=yt Follow Josh: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajoshhoward LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshthoward Follow Aaron: Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more. Chapters 00:00 - Intro 00:37 - What is a Durable Object? 01:43 - Cloudflare’s serverless model and V8 isolates 03:58 - Why stateful serverless matters 05:14 - Durable Objects vs Workers 06:22 - How routing to Durable Objects works 08:01 - What makes them "durable"? 08:51 - Tradeoffs of colocating compute and state 10:58 - Stateless Durable Objects 12:49 - Waking up from sleep and restoring state 16:15 - Durable Object storage: KV and SQLite APIs 18:49 - Relationship between D1, Workers KV, and DOs 20:34 - Performance of local storage writes 21:50 - Storage replication and output gating 24:15 - Lifecycle of a request through a Durable Object 26:46 - Replication strategy and long-term durability 31:25 - Placement logic and sharding strategy 36:35 - Use cases: agents, multiplayer games, chat apps 40:33 - Scaling Durable Objects 41:14 - Globally unique ID generation 43:22 - Named Durable Objects and coordination 46:07 - D1 vs Workers KV vs Durable Objects 47:50 - Outerbase acquisition and DX improvements 49:49 - Querying durable object storage 51:20 - Developer Week highlights and new features 52:44 - Read replicas and sticky sessions 53:49 - Containers and the future of routing 56:47 - Deployment regions and infrastructure expansion 57:43 - Hiring and how to connect with Josh

Show more...
5 months ago
1 hour 14 minutes

Database School
20 years of hacking Postgres with Heikki Linnakangas (cofounder of Neon)

In this episode of Database School, I talk with Heikki Linnakangas, co-founder of Neon and longtime PostgreSQL hacker, to talk about 20+ years in the Postgres community, the architecture behind Neon, and the future of multi-threaded Postgres. From paternity leave patches to branching production databases, we cover a lot of ground in this deep-dive conversation. Links: Let's make postgres multi-threaded: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/31cc6df9-53fe-3cd9-af5b-ac0d801163f4%40iki.fi Hacker News discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36284487 Follow Heikki: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heikki-linnakangas-6b58bb203/ Website: https://neon.tech Follow Aaron: Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more. 00:00 - Introduction and Heikki's background 01:19 - How Heikki got into Postgres 03:17 - First major patch: two-phase commit 04:00 - Governance and decision-making in Postgres 07:00 - Committer consensus and decentralization 09:25 - Attracting new contributors 11:25 - Founding Neon with Nikita Shamgunov 13:01 - Why separation of compute and storage matters 15:00 - Write-ahead log and architectural insights 17:03 - Early days of building Neon 20:00 - Building the control plane and user-facing systems 21:28 - What "serverless Postgres" really means 23:39 - Reducing cold start time from 5s to 700ms 25:05 - Storage architecture and page servers 27:31 - Who uses sleepable databases 28:44 - Multi-tenancy and schema management 31:01 - Role in low-code/AI app generation 33:04 - Branching, time travel, and read replicas 36:56 - Real-time point-in-time query recovery 38:47 - Large customers and scaling in Neon 41:04 - Heikki’s favorite Neon feature: time travel 41:49 - Making Postgres multi-threaded 45:29 - Why it matters for connection scaling 50:50 - The next five years for Postgres and Neon 52:57 - Final thoughts and where to find Heikki

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6 months ago
2 hours

Database School
Building a serverless database replica with Carl Sverre

Want to learn more SQLite? Check out my SQLite course: https://highperformancesqlite.com In this episode, Carl Sverre and I discuss why syncing everything is a bad idea and how his new project, Graft, makes edge-native, partially replicated databases possible. We dig into SQLite, object storage, transactional guarantees, and why Graft might be the foundation for serverless database replicas. SQLSync: https://sqlsync.dev Stop syncing everything blog post: https://sqlsync.dev/posts/stop-syncing-everything Graft: https://github.com/orbitinghail/graft Follow Carl: Twitter: https://twitter.com/carlsverre LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlsverre Website: https://carlsverre.com/ Follow Aaron: Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more. Chapters: 00:00 - Intro and Carl’s controversial blog title 01:00 - Why “stop syncing everything” doesn't mean stop syncing 02:30 - The problem with full database syncs 03:20 - Quick recap of SQL Sync and multiplayer SQLite 04:45 - How SQL Sync works using physical replication 06:00 - The limitations that led to building Graft 09:00 - What is Graft? A high-level overview 16:30 - Syncing architecture: how Graft scales 18:00 - Graft's stateless design and Fly.io integration 20:00 - S3 compatibility and using Tigris as backend 22:00 - Latency tuning and express zone support 24:00 - Can Graft run locally or with Minio? 27:00 - Page store vs meta store in Graft 36:00 - Index-aware prefetching in SQLite 38:00 - Prefetching intelligence: Graft vs driver 40:00 - The benefits of Graft's architectural simplicity 48:00 - Three use cases: apps, web apps, and replicas 50:00 - Sync timing and perceived latency 59:00 - Replaying transactions vs logical conflict resolution 1:03:00 - What’s next for Graft and how to get involved 1:05:00 - Hacker News reception and blog post feedback 1:06:30 - Closing thoughts and where to find Carl

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6 months ago
1 hour 28 minutes

Database School
Postgres on bare metal with the CEO of Prisma

Prisma started as a GraphQL backend and pivoted into one of the most widely used ORMs in the world. Now, they’ve launched Prisma Postgres, and CEO Søren Bramer Schmidt is here to break down the journey, the challenges, and the massive technical innovations behind it—including bare-metal servers, Firecracker microVMs, and unikernels. If you care about databases, performance, or scaling, this one’s for you.

Want to learn more Postgres? Check out my Postgres course: https://masteringpostgres.com.

Follow Søren:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sorenbs
GitHub: https://github.com/prisma/prisma
Prisma Postgres: https://www.prisma.io/postgres

Follow Aaron:
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:15 - The Origins of Prisma: From GraphQL to ORM
02:55 - Why Firebase & Parse Inspired Prisma
04:04 - The Pivot: From GraphQL to Prisma ORM
06:00 - Why They Abandoned Backend-as-a-Service
08:07 - The Open Source Business Model Debate
10:15 - The Challenges of Monetizing an ORM
12:42 - Building Prisma Accelerate & Pulse
14:55 - How Prisma Accelerate Optimizes Database Access
17:00 - Real-Time Database Updates with Prisma Pulse
20:03 - How Prisma Pulse Handles Change Data Capture (CDC)
23:15 - Users Wanted a Hosted Database (Even When Prisma Didn’t)
25:40 - Why Prisma Finally Launched Prisma Postgres
27:32 - Unikernels, Firecracker MicroVMs & Running Millions of Databases
31:10 - Bare Metal Servers vs. AWS: The Controversial Choice
34:40 - How Prisma Routes Queries for Low Latency
38:02 - Scaling, Cost Efficiency & Performance Benefits
42:10 - The Prisma Postgres Roadmap & Future Features
45:30 - Why Prisma is Competing with AWS & The Big Cloud Players
48:05 - Final Thoughts & Where to Learn More

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8 months ago
1 hour 24 minutes

Database School
Moving from Redis to SQLite with Mike Buckbee

Want to learn more SQLite? Check out my SQLite course: https://highperformancesqlite.com In this episode, I sit down with Mike Buckbee to dive into the nitty-gritty of web application firewalls and his journey from using Redis to SQLite in Wafris. We talk about database architecture, operational challenges, and the fascinating ways SQLite improves performance and usability in cybersecurity tools. Get production ready SQLite with Turso: https://tur.so/af. Follow Mike: Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbuckbee LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbuckbee Wafris website: https://wafris.org Rearchitecting Redis to SQLite article: https://wafris.org/blog/rearchitecting-for-sqlite Follow Aaron: Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more. Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction and Guest Overview 01:06 - What is Wafris? 02:43 - Naming and Origins of Wafris 04:00 - Mike's Cybersecurity Background 07:17 - Challenges with Web Application Firewalls 10:01 - Wafris Architecture Overview 16:15 - Why Switch to SQLite? 18:01 - Handling IP Address Ranges 24:00 - Wild Redis Data Structures Explained 28:51 - Transitioning to SQLite 32:02 - Operational Advantages of SQLite 37:04 - How Wafris Leverages Threat Lists 40:13 - Performance Gains with SQLite 46:51 - Splitting Reads and Writes in the New Architecture 52:29 - Closing Thoughts and Where to Learn More

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11 months ago
1 hour 9 minutes

Database School
Bootstrapping an email service provider (with Jesse Hanley)

Want to learn more Postgres? Check out my Postgres course: https://masteringpostgres.com. 

In this interview, I talk with Jesse Hanley, founder of Bento, about running a lean email service from Japan. We chat about the challenges of scaling infrastructure, managing databases, and maintaining a calm business while serving a global customer base. 

Links Mentioned: 
Bento: https://bentonow.com 
Database school on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI72dgeNJtzqElnNB6sQoAn2R-F3Vqm15
Database school audio only: https://databaseschool.transistor.fm

Follow Jesse:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessethanley
Bento on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bento

Follow Aaron:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction to Jesse Hanley
01:02 - Running Bento from Japan
01:48 - The Lean Team Structure at Bento
03:00 - Managing Support via Discord
05:01 - Benefits of Using Discord for Customer Support
06:45 - The Role of Community in Customer Feedback
09:01 - How Bento Gained Traction
13:00 - Bootstrapping Bento and Profitable Growth
16:00 - Running Your Own Mail Servers
19:03 - The Economics and Redundancy of Email Delivery
21:00 - Bento's Heroku Setup and Scaling Challenges
26:00 - Handling and Querying Massive Data in Bento
29:52 - Leveraging Elasticsearch for Data Queries
35:40 - Moving Toward Multi-Database Solutions
37:45 - Exploring Crunchy Data and Citus for Database Scaling
42:00 - Optimizing Bento for Performance and Scalability
54:02 - Jesse’s Advice on Building a Calm and Profitable Business
57:00 - How Bento Uses WebSockets and Background Jobs
1:00:00 - Optimizing Bento with Action Cable
1:02:25 - Avoiding N+1 Queries with WebSockets
1:04:50 - Scaling Redis and Postgres at Bento
1:09:00 - Jesse’s Approach to Managing Growth and Multiple Services
1:11:00 - Final Thoughts on Scaling and Optimizing Databases
1:13:10 - Advice for Aspiring Builders: Stay Patient and True to Your Vision
1:16:00 - Bento’s Unique Approach to Email Marketing and Transactional Emails
1:19:50 - Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Jesse Hanley Online

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1 year ago
1 hour 21 minutes

Database School
Creating a Postgres platform with Monica & Tudor from Xata.io

Want to learn more Postgres? Check out my Postgres course: https://masteringpostgres.com.

Production ready Postgres for teams that ship fast: https://xata.io In this interview, I talk with Monica Sarbu and Tudor Golubenco from Xata about their journey from Elastic to founding Xata. We deep dive on building a Postgres hosting platform, handling schema changes, and how they've made their free tier economical.

Links Mentioned:
Xata.io: https://xata.io/ The economics of a Postgres free tier:
https://xata.io/blog/postgres-free-tier

Follow Monica & Tudor:
Monica on Twitter: https://twitter.com/monicasarbu
Monica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicasarbu
Tudor on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tudor_g
Tudor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tudorgolubenco/

Follow Aaron:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
00:26 - What is Xata? Overview and Mission
01:32 - Open Source Projects: PG Roll and PG Stream
02:33 - Synchronizing Data: Postgres to Elastic Search
03:12 - Monica and Tudor's Background & Journey to Elastic
04:00 - Founding of Packetbeat: The Start of Open Source Monitoring
06:08 - Transition from Elastic to Starting Xata
07:00 - Launching a Nonprofit and Insights on Database Challenges
08:29 - The Idea Behind Xata: Simplifying Application Development
10:00 - Tudor Joins Xata: The Decision to Start Again
10:47 - The Technical Vision for Xata's Platform
12:06 - Founding Xata During the Pandemic 13:11 - Funding Journey: From Seed to Series A
15:07 - Building a Platform, Not Just a Hosted Database
17:20 - Introducing Postgres to Xata's Stack
20:19 - Navigating Postgres as a DBA
22:44 - Open Source Strategy & Community Building
27:48 - PG Stream Use Cases & Postgres Replication
32:08 - PG Roll for Zero Downtime Schema Changes
36:05 - Implementing Safe and Fast Schema Changes
39:49 - Blob Storage and Cloudflare Integration
45:11 - Xata's Unique Features: Serving Builders and Larger Teams
49:20 - Free Tier Economics and Why It Matters
56:04 - Working as a Husband-Wife Team

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1 year ago
1 hour 1 minute

Database School
Heroku's glory days & Postgres vs the world, w/ Craig Kerstiens

Want to learn more Postgres? Check out my Postgres course: https://masteringpostgres.com.

In this interview, I dive deep with Craig Kerstiens from Crunchy Data into the world of Postgres, covering its rise to prominence, scaling at Heroku, and the power of Postgres extensions. Craig also shares insights on database sharding, the future of Postgres, and why developers love working with it.

Follow Craig:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/craigkerstiens
Crunchy Data Blog: https://www.crunchydata.com/blog

Follow Aaron:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis
Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.

Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: Welcome to Database School
00:20 - Guest Introduction: Craig Kerstiens and Crunchy Data
01:40 - Craig's Journey from Heroku to Crunchy Data
02:55 - Scaling Postgres at Heroku
04:50 - Mastering Postgres Course Announcement
05:30 - The Importance of Postgres at Heroku
07:50 - The Value of Live SQL with Data Clips
09:25 - Data Clips for Business Intelligence and Real-Time Analytics
11:05 - Heroku’s Unique Company Culture and How Data Clips Came to Be
12:30 - Postgres Extensions and Marketplace
14:00 - Citus: Scaling Postgres for Multi-Tenant Applications
15:40 - The Challenges of Sharding in Databases
18:00 - Managing Large Databases and Sharding Keys with Citus
24:00 - The Evolution of Postgres and Its Growing Popularity
31:00 - Postgres for Developers and the Importance of Extensions
35:00 - Extensions as Proving Grounds for Core Postgres Features
37:50 - Building an Extension Marketplace for Postgres
41:00 - Postgres as a Data Platform and Developer Flexibility
46:00 - Why Developers Love Postgres: Stability, Extensions, and Ownership
51:00 - DuckDB: A Fascinating New Database Approach
53:30 - Crunchy Data: What They Offer and Why It Matters
58:30 - Expanding Postgres with DuckDB for Data Warehousing
01:00:00 - Wrapping Up: Where to Find Craig and Crunchy Data

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1 year ago
1 hour 2 minutes

Database School
Ruby on Rails + SQLite with Stephen Margheim

Want to learn more about SQLite? Check out the full course: https://highperformancesqlite.com Get production ready SQLite with Turso: https://tur.so/af.

In this interview, I talk to Stephen Margheim about his work with SQLite and Ruby on Rails.

Links:
Database school on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI72dgeNJtzqElnNB6sQoAn2R-F3Vqm15
Database school audio only: https://databaseschool.transistor.fm
Aaron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis
Stephen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fractaledmind
Stephen's blog: https://fractaledmind.github.io/
Stephen's book: https://fractaledmind.gumroad.com/l/sqlite-on-rails
Aaron's conference talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YaEtaXYVtI

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1 year ago
1 hour 43 minutes

Database School
Migrating from Postgres to SQLite with Kent C. Dodds

Want to learn more about SQLite? Check out the full course: https://highperformancesqlite.com. Get production ready SQLite with Turso: https://tur.so/af. In this interview, I talk to Kent C. Dodds about SQLite, LiteFS and the React ecosystem.

Kent: https://twitter.com/kentcdodds
EpicWeb: https://www.epicweb.dev
The Epic Stack: https://www.epicweb.dev/epic-stack
Fly.io: https://fly.io
LiteFS: https://fly.io/docs/litefs
Litestream: https://litestream.io

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1 year ago
51 minutes

Database School
Join database educator Aaron Francis as he gets schooled by database professionals.