Re: [gentoo-user] PostgreSQL Vs MySQL @Uber

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday, August 02, 2016 12:16:32 AM james wrote:
> On 08/01/2016 11:49 AM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Monday, August 01, 2016 08:43:49 AM james wrote:

<snipped>

> >> Way back, when the earth was cooling and we all had dinosaurs for pets,
> >> some of us hacked on AT&T "3B2" unix systems. They were know for their
> >> 'roll back and recovery', triplicated (or more) transaction processes
> >> and 'voters' system to ferret out if a transaction was complete and
> >> correct. There was no ACID, the current 'gold standard' if you believe
> >> what Douglas and other write about concerning databases.
> >>
> >> In essence, (from crusted up memories) a basic (SS7) transaction related
> >> to the local telephone switch, was ran  on 3 machines. The results were
> >> compared. If they matched, the transaction went forward as valid. If 2/3
> >> matched,
> >
> > And what in the likely case when only 1 was correct?
>
> 1/3 was a failure, in fact X<1 could be defined (parameter setting) as a
> failure depending on the need.

I actually meant:
system A says true
system B and C say false
And "true" was correct.
(Being devil's advocate here)

> > Have you seen the movie "minority report"?
> > If yes, think back to why Tom Cruise was found 'guilty' when he wasn't and
> > how often this actually occured.
>
> Apples to Oranges. The (3) "pre-cons" were  not equal, ableit the voted,
> most of the time all three in agreement, but the dominant pre-con was
> always on the correct side of the issue. But that is make-believe.

Ofcourse, but it was the first example that I could come up with.

> Comparing results of codes run on 3 different processors or separate
> machines for agreement withing tolerances, is quite different.  The very
> essence of using voting where there a result less that 1.0 (that is
> n-1/n or n-x/n  was requisite on identical (replicated) processes all
> returning the same result ( expecting either a 0 or 1) returned. Results
> being logical or within rounding error of acceptance. Surely we need not
> split hairs. I was merely pointing out that the basis telecom systems
> formed the early and of widespread transaction processing industries and
> is the grand daddy of the ACID model/norms/constructs of modern
> transaction processing.

Hmm... I am having difficulty following how ACID and ensuring results are 
correct by double or triple checking are related.

> And Douglas is

Which Douglas are you referring to? The one in this thread didn't actually 
write the article he linked to. (Unless he has 2 different identities)

> dead wrong that those sorts of (ACID) transactions cannot be made to fly
> on clusters versus a single machine.

It depends on how you define a cluster. I tend to view a cluster as a single 
system that just happens to be spread over multiple physical boxes.

> For massively parallel needs,
> distributed processing rules, but it is not trivial

Agreed.

> and hence Uber, with
> mostly a bunch of kids, seems to be struggling and have made bad
> decisions.

Lets ignore if the decisions are good or bad. Only thing we can be certain of, 
without seeing their code and environment, is that it doesn't scale the way 
they need it to.

> Prolly, there mid managers and software architects are the
> weak link, or they did get expert guidance that was not inhouse, or poor
> decisions to get some code running quickly etc etc. I do not really care
> about UBER.

Neither do I. And decisions are usually made by a single architect or 
developer who starts the project. His/her manager usually just accepts his/her 
word on this and all future decisions. Up until the moment the manager gets 
replaced. Then it depends on how much the manager trusts the original 
developer.
Other developers (internal or external) usually have a hard time pointing out 
potential issues if the first developer doesn't agree and/or understand.

> My singular issue is Douglas was completely dead wrong
> (which nicely promoted himself as a postgress expert and his business
> credentals, and just barely saved his credibility by stating what UBER
> is now doing that is superior to a grade ACID, dB solution.

I didn't see that in the article. Must have missed that part.

> Another point, there are single big GPUs that can be run as thousands of
> different processors on either FPGA or GPU, granted using SIMD/MIMD
> style processors and thing like 'systolic algorithms' but that sort of
> this is out of scope here. (Vulcan might change that, in an open source
> kind of way, maybe). Furthermore, GPU resources combined with DDR-5 can
> blur the line and may actually be more cost effective for many forms of
> transaction processing, but clusters, in their current forms are very
> much general purpose machines.

I don't really agree here. For most software, having a really fast CPU helps. 
Having a lot of mediocre CPUs means the vast majority isn't doing anything 
useful.
Software running on clusters needs to be written with massive parallel 
processing in mind. Most developers don't understand this part.

> My point:: Douglas is dead wrong about
> ACID being dominated by Databases, for technical reasons, particularly
> for advanced teams of experts.

Wikipedia actually disagrees with you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID
"In computer science, ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) is 
a set of properties of database transactions."

In other words, it's related to databases.

> Surely most MBA, HR and Finance types of
> idiots running these new startups would know know a coder from an
> architect, and that is very sad, because a good consultant could have
> probably designed several robust systems in a week or two. Grant few
> consultants has that sort of unbiased integrity, because we all have
> bills to pay and much is getting outsourced... Integrity has always been
> the rarest of qualities, particularly with humanoids......

The software Uber uses for their business had to be developed in-house as 
there, at least at the time, was nothing available they could use ready-made.
This usually means, they start with something simple they can get running 
quickly. If they want to fully design the whole system first, they would never 
get anything done.

Where these projects usually go wrong is that they wait too long with a good 
robust design, leading to a near impossibility of actually fixing all the, in 
hindsight obvious, design mistakes.
(NOTE: In hindsight, as most of the actual requirements would not be clear on 
day 1)

> >> and the switch was was configured, then the code would
> >> essentially 'vote' and majority ruled. This is what led to phone calls
> >> (switched phone calls) having variable delays, often in the order of
> >> seconds, mis-connections and other problems we all encountered during
> >> periods of excessive demand.
> >
> > Not sure if that was the cause in the past, but these days it can also
> > still take a few seconds before the other end rings. This is due to the
> > phone-system (all PBXs in the path) needing to setup the routing between
> > both end-points prior to the ring-tone actually starting.
> > When the system is busy, these lookups will take time and can even
> > time-out. (Try wishing everyone you know a happy new year using a wired
> > phone and you'll see what I mean. Mobile phones have a seperate problem
> > at that time)
> I did not intend to argue about the minutia of how a particular Baby
> Bell implemented their SS7 switching systems on unix systems. My point
> was the 'transaction processing' grew out the early telephone network,
> the way I remember it:: ymmv. Banks did dual entry accounting by hand
> and had clerks manually load data sets, then double entry accounting
> became automated and ACID style transaction processing added later. So
> what sql folks refer to as ACID properties, comes from the North
> American  switching heritage and eventually the worlds telecom networks,
> eons ago.

There is a similarity, but where ACID is a way of guaranteeing data integrity, 
a phone-switch does not need this. It simply needs to do the routing 
correctly.
Finance departments still do double-entry accounting and there still is a lot 
of manual writing/typing going on.

> >> That scenario was at the heart of how old, crappy AT&T unix (SVR?) could
> >> perform so well and therefore established the gold standard for RT
> >> transaction processing, aka the "five  9s" 99.999% of up-time (about 5
> >> minutes per year of downtime).
> >
> > "Unscheduled" downtime. Regular maintenance will require more than 5
> > minutes per year.
>
> Yes but the redundancy of 3b2 and other computers (Sequent, Sequoia and
> Tandem to name a few) meant that the "phone switching" fabric, at any
> given Central Office (the local building where the copper, Rf and fiber
> lines are muxed)(was, on average up and available 99.999% of the time.
> Ironically gentoo now has a 'sys/fabric group ::
> /usr/portage/sys-fabric, thanks to some forward thinking cluster folk.
>
> >> Sure this part is only related to
> >> transaction processing as there was much more to the "five 9s" legacy,
> >> but imho, that is the heart of what was the precursor to ACID property's
> >> now so greatly espoused in SQL codes that Douglas refers to.
> >>
> >> Do folks concur or disagree at this point?
> >
> > ACID is about data integrity. The "best 2 out of 3" voting was, in my
> > opinion, a work-around for unreliable hardware.
>
> Absolute true. But the fact that a High Reliability in computer
> processing (including the billing) could be replicated performed
> elsewhere and then 'recombined', proves that the need of any ACID
> function can be split up and ran on clusters and achieve ACID standards
> or even better. So my point, is that the cluster, if used wisely,
> will beat the 'dog shit' out of any Oracle fancy-pants database
> maneuvers. Evidence:: Snoracle is now snapping up billion dollar
> companies in the cluster space, cause their days of extortion are
> winding down rather rapidly, imho.

I disagree here. For some workloads, clusters are really great. But SQL 
databases will remain.

> Also, just because the kids are writing the codes, have not figured all
> of this out, does not mean that SQL and any abstraction is better that
> parallel processing. No way in hell. Cheaper and quicker to set up,
> surely true, but never superior to a well design properly coded
> distributed solution. That's my point.

Workloads where you can split the whole processing into small chunks where the 
same steps can be performed over a random sized chunk and merging at a later 
stage will lead to correct results. Then yes.
However, I deal with processes and reports where the amount of possible chunks 
is definitely limited and any theoretical benefit of splitting it over multiple 
nodes will be lost when having to build a very fancy and complex algorithm to 
merge all the seperate results back together.
This algorithm then also needs to be extensively tested analysed and 
understood by future developers. The additional cost involved will be 
prohibitive.

> Hence, Douglas is full of
> stuffing, except he alludes to the fact that UBER is doing something
> much better, beyond what Oracle has an interest in doing, at the last
> possible moment in his critique. This is back up by Oracles lethargic
> reaction to the data processing market just leaving Oracle to become the
> next IBM.... (ymmv).

I disagree, UBER is still using a relational database as the storage layer 
with something custom put over it to make it simpler for the developers.
Any abstraction layer will have a negative performance impact.

> > It is based on a clever idea, but when
> > 2 computers having the same data and logic come up with 2 different
> > answers, I wouldn't trust either of them.
>
> Yep, That the QA of  Transactions is rejected and must be resubmitted,
> modified or any number of remedies, is quite common in many forms of
> software. Voting does not correct errors, except maybe a fractional
> rounding up to 1(pass) or down to zero (failure). It does help to
> achieve the ACI of ACID

It's one way of doing it. But it can also cause extra delays due to having to 
wait for seperate nodes to finish and then to check if they all agree.

> Since billions and billions of these (complex) transactions are
> occurring, it is usually just repeated. If it keeps failing then
> engineers/coders take a deeper look. Rare statistical anomalies are
> auto-scrutinized (that would be replications and voting) and the pushed
> to a logical zero or logical one.

The complexity comes from having to mould the algorithm into that structure. 
And additional complexity also makes it more fault-likely.

> >> The reason this is important to me (and others?), is that, if this idea
> >> (granted there is much more detail to it) is still valid, then it can
> >> form  the basis for building up superior-ACID processes, that meet or
> >> exceed, the properties of an expensive (think Oracle) transaction
> >> process on distributed (parallel) or clustered systems, to a degree of
> >> accuracy only limited by the limit of the number of odd numbered voter
> >> codes involve in the distributed and replicated parts of the
> >> transaction. I even added some code where replicated routines were
> >> written in different languages, and the results compared to add an
> >> additional layer of verification before the voter step. (gotta love
> >> assembler?).
> >
> > You have seen how "democracies" work, right? :)
>
> Yes I need to shed some light on  telecom processing. I never intend to
> suggest that voting corrected errors; althoght error correction codes
> are usually part of the overall stack. I  tried to suggest that all
> transactions on phone switches are already (Atomic (pass or fail-redo;
> Consistent (replications pass on different hardware pathways to
> satisfaction metrics; Isolated via multiple hardware pathways; Durable
> passing a voter check scheme and (five nines still is the gold standard
> for a system (even mil-spec).
>
> So the old telecom systems are indeed and infact  the heritage for
> modern ACID transactions.

A lot can be described using 'modern' designs. However, the fact remains that 
ACID was worked out for databases and not for phone systems. Any sane system 
will have some form of consistency checks, but the extent where this is done 
for a data storage layer, like a database, will be different to the extent 
where this is done for a switching layer, like a router or phone switch.

Modern phone switches will not implement a redo.

> > The more voters involved, the longer it takes for all the votes to be
> > counted.
> Wrong! Voters are all run in parallel. For this level of redundancy (to
> achieve a QA result of 99.999% system pristine, it is more expensive,
> analogous to encryption versus clear text. Nobody, but a business major
> would use an excessive number of voters in their switching fabric.
> Telecom incompetences, in my experiences, has been the domain of mid
> manager too weak to educate upper management on poor ideas many of them
> have had and continue to have (Verizon comes to mind, too often).

Those incompetencies are usually in the domain of finances and services 
provided. The basic service of a telecoms company is pretty simple: "Pass 
data/voice between A and B".
There are plenty of proven systems available that can do this. The mistakes 
are usually of the kind: The system that we bought does not handle the load 
the salesperson promised.

> > With a small number, it might actually still scale, but when you pass a
> > magic number (no clue what this would be), the counting time starts to
> > exceed any time you might have gained by adding more voters.
>
> Nope the larger the number, the more expensive. The number of voters
> rarely goes above 5, but it could for some sorts of physics problems
> (think quantum mechanics and logic not bound to [0 1] whole numbers.
> Often logic circuits (constructs for programmers, have "dont care"
> states that can be handled in a variety of ways (filters, transforms,
> counters etc etc).

"don't care" values should always be ignored. Never actually used. (Except for 
randomizer functionality)

> > Also, this, to me, seems to counteract the whole reason for using
> > clusters:
> > Have different nodes handle a different part of the problem.
>
> That also occurs. But my point is properly design code for the cluster
> can replace ACID functions, offered by Oracle and other over priced
> solutions, on standard cluster hardware.

All commonly used relational databases have ACID functionality as long as they 
support transactions. There is no need to only choose a commercial version for 
that.

> The problem with todays
> clusters is the vendors that employ the kid-coders, are making things
> far more complicated that necessary, so the average linux hacker just
> outsources via the cloud. DUMB, insecure and not a wise choice for many
> industries.

Moving your entire business into the cloud often is.

> And sooner or later folks are going to get wise can build
> their own clusters that just solve the problems they have. Surely hybrid
> clusters will domiant where the owner of the codes does outsource peak
> loads and mundance collects of ordinary (non-critical) data.

Eg. hybrid solutions...

> Vendors
> know this and have started another 'smoke and mirrors' campaign called
> (brace yourself) 'Unikernels'.....

"unikernels" is something a small group came up with... I see no practical 
benefit for that approach.

> Problem with that approach is they
> should just be using minized (focused) gentoo on striped and optimize
> linux kernels; but that is another lost art from the linux collection

I see "unikernels" as basically, running the applications directly on top of a 
hypervisor. I fail to see how this makes more sense than starting an 
application directly on top of an OS. The whole reason we have an OS is to 
avoid having to reinvent the wheel (networking, storage, memory handling,....) 
for every single program.

> > Clusters of multiple compute-nodes is a quick and "simple" way of
> > increasing the amount of computational cores to throw at problems that
> > can be broken down in a lot of individual steps with minimal
> > inter-dependencies.
>
> And surpass the ACID features of either postgresql or Oracle, and spend
> less money (maybe not with you and postgresql on their team)!

Large clusters are useful when doing Hadoop ("big data") style things (I 
mostly work with financial systems and the corresponding data).
Storing the entire datawarehouse inside a cluster doesn't work with all the 
additional requirements. Reports still need to be displayed quickly and a 
decently configured database is usually more beneficial. Where systems like 
Exadata really help here is by integrating the underlying storage (SAN) with 
the actual database servers and doing most of the processing in-memory.
Eg. it works like a dedicated and custom build cluster environment specifically 
for a relational database.


> > I say "simple" because I think designing a 1,000 core chip is more
> > difficult than building a 1,000-node cluster using single-core, single
> > cpu boxes.
> Today, you are correct. Tomorrow you will be wrong.

In that case, clusters will be obsolete tomorrow.

> [1]. Besides once
> that chip or VHDL code or whatever is designed, it can be replicated and
> resused endlessly. Think ASIC designers, folks to take a fpga project to
> completing, An EE can codes on large arrays of DSPs, or a GPU
> (think Khronos group) using Vulcan.
>
> > I would still consider the cluster to be a single "machine".
>
> Thats the goal.

That, in my opinion, that goal has already been achieved. Unless you want ALL 
machines to be part of the same cluster and all machines being able to push 
work to the entire cluster...
In that case, good luck in achieving this as you then also need to handle 
"randomly dissapearing nodes"

> >> I guess my point is 'Douglas' is full of stuffing, OR that is what folks
> >> are doing when they 'role their own solution specifically customized to
> >> their specific needs' as he alludes to near the end of his commentary?
> >
> > The response Douglas linked to is closer to what seems to work when
> > dealing
> > with large amounts of data.
> >
> >> (I'd like your opinion of this and maybe some links to current schemes
> >> how to have ACID/99.999% accurate transactions on clusters of various
> >> architectures.)  Douglas, like yourself, writes of these things in a
> >> very lucid fashion, so that is why I'm asking you for your thoughts.
> >
> > The way Uber created the cluster is useful when having 1 node handle all
> > the updates and multiple nodes providing read-only access while also
> > providing failover functionality.
>
> SIMD solution, mimic on a cluster? Cool.

Hmm.... no.
This is load balancing on the data-retrieval side.

> >> Robustness of transactions, in a distributed (clustered) environment is
> >> fundamental to the usefulness of most codes that are trying to migrate
> >> to a cluster based processes in (VM/container/HPC) environments.
> >
> > Whereas I do consider clusters to be very useful, not all work-loads can
> > be
> > redesigned to scale properly.
>
> Today, correct. Tomorrow, I think you are going to be wrong. It's like
> the single core, multicore.

And 90+% of developers still don't understand how to properly code for multi-
threading. Just look at how most applications work on your desktop. They all 
tend to max out a single core and the other x-1 cores tend to idle...

> Granted many old decreped codes had to be
> redesigned and coded anew with threads and other modern constructs to
> take advantage of newer processing platforms.

Intel came with Hyperthreading back in 2005 (or even before). We are now in 
2016 and the majority of code is still single-threaded.
The problem is, the algorithms that are being used need to be converted to 
parallel methods.

> Sure the same is true with
> distributed, but it's far closer than ever. The largest problem with
> cluster, is Vendors with agendas, are making things more complicated
> than necessary and completely ignoring many fundamental issues, like
> kernel stripping and optimizations under the bloated OS they are using.

I still want a graphical desktop with full multi media support. I still want 
to easily plugin a USB device or SD-card and use it immediately,.....
That requirement is incompatible with stripping the OS.

> >> I do
> >> not have the old articles handy but, I'm sure that many/most of those
> >> types of inherent processes can be formulated in the algebraic domain,
> >> normalized and used to solve decisions often where other forms of
> >> advanced logic failed (not that I'm taking a cheap shot at modern
> >> programming languages) (wink wink nudge nudge); or at least that's how
> >> we did it.... as young whipper_snappers bask in the day...
> >
> > If you know what you are doing, the language is just a tool. Sometimes a
> > hammer is sufficient, other times one might need to use a screwdriver.
> >
> >> --an_old_farts_logic
> >
> > Thinking back on how long I've been playing with computers, I wonder how
> > long it will be until I am in the "old fart" category?
>
> Stay young! I run full court hoops all the time with young college
> punks; it's one of my greatest joys in life, run with the young
> stallions, hacking, pushing, shoving, slicing and taunting other
> athletes. Old farts clubs is not something to be proud of, I just like
> to share too much......

Hehe.... One is only as old as he/she feels.

--
Joost