Re:FoundationDB's Lesson: A Fast Key-Value Store Is Not Enough
by jhugg on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @07:35PM
(#9307724)
I could have easily written the same post months ago, yes. None of these thoughts are new.
It's actually precisely because FDB isn't a perceived competitor anymore that I can write this. As a vendor, I actually have much less of an agenda now. It's not like I'm worried about FDB stealing a customer. If I had posted this months ago, it would have been less credible and it would have felt tacky.
The other point is that I think there's actually something to say here. I'm not just dumping on a dead product, I'm trying to show there's a lesson to learn here about trying to bolt SQL onto things (a trend). To contrast, if NuoDB disappeared tomorrow, I could write a solid post on why they could never technically achieve what their marketing said they could, but there's no lesson there. "Don't make bad engineering choices" is too generic.
My primary issue is that the people best able to rebut John's well-argued points are no longer able to do so.
My secondary issue is that John could have easily made the same logical arguments _before_ FoundationDB was acquired, but chose not to do so for whatever reason. This would have led to a much more enlightening debate than the one we're able to have now.