Apple takes ACID-compliant NoSQL upstart FoundationDB

Apple has acquired FoundationDB, a company that “is creating a new generation of database technology that combines the advantages of modern NoSQL databases with the power and reliability of ACID transactions.” Cupertino's not saying why it wants the company, how much it paid, what it plans to do with it or, indeed, whether the …

[Fazal Majid]

iCloud Storage

My guess is they realized the current backend for iCloud Storage won't scale, want a replacement and don't want to be beholden to a third-party software vendor for something this critical to their platform. iCloud Storage has 2 APIs, document database and key-value store, and FoundationDB's multi-model capabilities would be a good fit.

[BigDataDave]

Re: iCloud Storage

Isn't the backend of iCloud AWS and Azure?

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: iCloud Storage

Considering how fallible cloud services have been, I always thought Apple's decision to use two cloud storage providers was a rather sensible one. Eggs, Basket, and all....

[Decade]

FOSS that you can rely on

The more I see, the more I am convinced that Free Software is the only long-term reasonable software. And not the fake Open Source with Closed Extensions, like Monty Widenius originally did with MySQL.

You just can't build a lasting business on somebody else's proprietary software. It is always vulnerable to the changing priorities of its owners, even if the owner is as rich and developer-friendly as Microsoft, as the users of Visual Basic and FoxPro have discovered.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FOSS that you can rely on

Did you miss the part where these guys pulled their Github repos? What use is your FOSS if Apple can buy the company and make it closed source?

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: FOSS that you can rely on

The last version in the repo isn't closed source, although the next version they produce might be.

All you need is someone with a clone of the repo to repost it, and work can continue.

[Decade]

Re: FOSS that you can rely on

Did you miss the part where these guys pulled their Github repos?

If it's FOSS, then there are copies elsewhere. Like when Oracle ended OpenSolaris, the illumos project continues. The primary sponsor of Node.js just released work that they've been doing to put Docker containers on illumos. Or when Oracle made MySQL less attractive, the founder forked it and started MariaDB. The benefit of FOSS is that a company can't revoke your access to it.

No, FoundationDB was never FOSS. Its Github repositories were mostly bindings so you could use FoundationDB from various languages. They're useless by themselves. And an SQL parser, which was actually forked from Apache Derby, and there are copies elsewhere.

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Re: FOSS that you can rely on

FOSS is a fake economy.

If you applied Game Theory and looked at the economy behind FOSS, you'll find that in certain micro examples, it works, yet at the macro example it doesn't.

Sorry, but do the math and run the numbers.

[John Gamble]

Re: FOSS that you can rely on

"If you applied Game Theory and looked at the economy behind FOSS, you'll find that in certain micro examples, it works, yet at the macro example it doesn't."

That requires a bit more in the way of citations for me to accept any part of the premise, let alone the conclusion.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: FOSS that you can rely on

That requires a bit more in the way of citations for me to accept any part of the premise, let alone the conclusion.

Indeed. I certainly don't believe FOSS is a silver bullet, and I make my money from proprietary, closed-source software, but that post had so much handwaving I could feel the breeze here.

"Game theory mumble economics mumble ignore the exceptions mumble QED!" I'm reminded of Professor Frink's "Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving."¹

A bit surprising there wasn't a "quantum" somewhere in there too.

¹See also Hawking, Musk, Woz.

[Tom 7]

Not had much of a chance to play with NoSQL in a war zone

but doesnt making it acid compliant basically make it SQL?

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Re: Not had much of a chance to play with NoSQL in a war zone

No and depending on the database NoSQL (Which is a misnomer) you can't make it ACID compliant.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Not had much of a chance to play with NoSQL in a war zone

No. SQL is a language. ACID is a set of consistency guarantees - or, more precisely, consistency goals, which are guaranteed when further requirements are met. Relational DBMSes provide ACID guarantees when the database is in normal form, for example; but the relational algebra is not the only way to prove those guarantees are satisfied.

And these days, "NoSQL" is typically glossed as "Not only SQL". It's a dumb term, but then so much of our jargon is.