InfoQ

News

Drizzle - a new direction for databases

Posted by Ian Roughley on Aug 12, 2008 08:01 AM

Community
Architecture
Topics
Database Design
Tags
MySQL ,
Database

Unveiled at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) by Brian Aker (MySQL Director of Architecture), Drizzle can be described as a "what if" project for creating a database specifically tuned for a particular subset of applications.

Brian outlines this best in his blog:

The goal right now is to target a certain class of applications/developers and see if this is useful. As an example:
  1. Web based apps.
  2. Cloud components.
  3. Databases without business logic (aka stored procedures).
  4. Multi-Core architecture.
What are the bigger differences in philosophies?

Adopt external libraries, use open source mechanics for contributions, keep to an open style of communication, and remove the line between internal and external development. Essentially do what I have been referring to as "Organic Open Source". We have focused on C99, POSIX and autotools based systems. We have taken to a very micro-kernel design where code is being removed from the center and pushed out to the edges via interfaces. We are taking a Linux/Apache tightly coupled design for modules.

More formally, Drizzles features are:

  • Based on MySQL 6.0 source tree
  • No shipped libraries
  • POSIX compliance
  • Micro kernel design
  • Pluggable Architecture for views, stored procedures, UDFs, storage engines ...
  • Sharding across multiple nodes
  • Intelligent proxy
  • Multi CPU/Multi Core
  • Optimized field types
  • Efficient memory useage
  • No internal ACL, use LDAP/PAM
  • No database data formatting
  • Cleaned up make system
  • InnoDB default storage engine
  • Windows compatibility removed

Currently Drizzle is in alpha (with major new changes being introduced daily), with no stable release or binary release.  For more information, or to download and experiment, visit the Drizzle website.

drizzly drizzly.... by Zubin Wadia Posted Aug 12, 2008 4:58 PM
  1. Back to top

    drizzly drizzly....

    Aug 12, 2008 4:58 PM by Zubin Wadia

    Some more thoughts on Drizzle here: http://zwadia.com/?p=26

    Cheers,

    Zubin Wadia

    CTO

    www.imagework.com

    "Business Acceleration through Process Automation."

Educational Content

Bindings, Platforms, and Innovation

This presentation focuses on the Internet and separating myth from fact, history from the future, and the mundane from the imaginative. Bob Frankston presents a vision of what could and should be.

Orchestrating Long Running Activities with JBoss / JBPM

This article explores the use of JBoss and jBPM to implement design solutions that effectively address the issue of orchestrating long running activities.

Neo4j - The Benefits of Graph Databases

This presentation covers the use of graph databases as an optimal solution for data that is difficult to fit in static tables, rapidly evolving data or data that has a lot of optional attributes.

Realistic about Risk: Software development with Real Options

This session introduces Real Options and shows how it can help in running your project. Real Options is a decision-making process that can be used to manage risk.

Communication Flexibility Using Bindings

This article discusses the use of bindings on services and references (including the instance of non-configured bindings) as the means to implement SCA communications in a Web and SOA environment.

Writing DSLs in Groovy

After a short introduction to DSLs, Scott Davis plays with the keyboard showing how to approach the creation of a DSL by typing working snippets of Groovy code that get executed.

Scaling Agile with C/ALM (Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management)

IBM Rational and InfoQ present, Scaling Agile with C/ALM, an eBook showing organizations how to become “finely tuned software delivery machines” by enabling team integration and scaling.

Concurrent Programming with Microsoft F#

Amanda Laucher presents a real life enterprise application written in F#. She shows actual code snippets, explaining design decisions and suggesting how to use some of the F# constructs.