Two former Facebook developers have created a new database, MemSQL, that they say is the world's fastest; it is is thirty times faster than conventional disk-based databases

[u/mepper]

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/84-database/4397-memsql-80000-queries-per-second.html

[u/aweraw]

...?

So, memory access is much much faster than disk access - what else is new?

[u/[deleted] → u/aweraw]

also they compile their SQL statements instead of interpreting them!

it's amazing that no one else ever thought of that until now!

[u/csolisr]

The main reason that MemSQL achieves the speed it does is because of being memory based, with all the benefits and drawbacks in terms of size limits and potential data loss that carries.

Exactly what I was thinking about. Especially about data loss.

The documentation says that MemSQL writes back to disk/SSD as soon as the transaction is acknowledged in memory, and that using a combination of write-ahead logging and snapshotting ensures your data is secure.

That calms me a little, but still! Data loss is possible!

[u/himey72]

This isn't exactly new or revolutionary. I'm an Oracle DBA and Oracle's database engine has been doing this since at least the early 90's. Not with every piece of data because if you're using Oracle, you probably have more data than RAM, but this is exactly what Oracle's buffer cache is all about. It stores the most recently used data and the data that is likely to be used in the buffer cache for fast access. Background process are always writing modified RAM blocks to disk. MySQL is fine for smaller / low budget projects, but if you want to get true performance / reliability, you need to migrate to something bigger and better.

[u/amoeba108 → u/himey72]

Sounds similar to MySQL and innodb_buffer_pool

InnoDB maintains a storage area called the buffer pool for caching data and indexes in memory.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/innodb-buffer-pool.html

[u/Xilean]

Atomicity...check

Consistency...check

Integrity...check

Durability...check

And by check I mean "doesn't have". But it's suuuuper fast guys.

[u/Senor_Wilson]

Cool, but at some point it will be written to disk and then it will take just as long as everything else. Memory is quick, no surprises there.

[u/JudgeWhoOverrules]

I wanna see this go head to head with Redis.

[u/derraidor]

Why not voltdb?

[u/machzel08]

Anyone find it ironic that Facebook developers are making something speedy? Clearly these guys didn't work on the app.