Rows, columns, and the search for a database that can do everything

Under Nevada's baking summer sunshine, Snowflake last week promised it would bring together two ways of working with data that mix about as well as oil and water. The data warehouse vendor – well known for its stratospheric $120 billion post-IPO valuation – said it would support both analytics and transactional workloads in …

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop selling snake oil

> The appeal of using a single database for different workloads is not just in the simplicity of the design and support. There is also an economic driver, particularly with the advent of cloud computing where users can end up paying for data movement, storage, and processing, said Ravita.

This being why everyone who know what they're doing use PostgreSQL.

[42656e4d203239]

Re: Stop selling snake oil

>>everyone who know what they're doing use PostgreSQL

The very same PostgreSQL that was, quite recently, being encouraged to add column store to its database engine... Linky

[sabroni]

Snowflake has declined the opportunity to take part in this article.

Bunch of Snowflakes!

[Efer Brick]

Re: Snowflake has declined the opportunity to take part in this article.

bunch of melts!

[TeeCee]

Hmm, let me fix that.

"...pull all that data into Snowflake [and then] everything's in Snowflake and it's easy to managewe'll have them by the balls and can charge the gullible sods whatever the fuck we like, just like SAP. We'll be rich, RICH I SAY...BUWAHAHAHAHA,"

Why is it that "Give someone else your critical data and processing and hope to christ they don't decide to exploit their hold over you" always seems attractive as a strategy?

[andy 103]

Most people don't understand how to benefit from existing databases anyway

Instead of developing NewShinyThings (TM) how about we consider this:

Most people - even seasoned software engineers - don't even understand how to get the most out of "old" platforms like MySQL.

20 years ago I was developing small websites which used MySQL as their database. After a year or so I thought "I know a lot about MySQL now". Wrong - I did not.

Even after using it for nearly 2 decades I'm still finding ways to improve the way I work with it. The limitations of the DBMS have never been above the limitations of my knowledge.

It seems that the older platforms focused on doing a relatively small number of things extremely well.

These new technologies have a very 2022 feel, i.e. marketing and bullshit over actually being decent capable technologies that are fit for purpose.

If you think the bottleneck is with existing DB platforms, it's not, it's your knowledge (or lack thereof) in how to use them to their best. Do some reading instead of wasting time on this kind of stuff.