Michigan Engineering
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2015–2024
55:53 · 30K views · Dec 4, 2015
Database pioneer Michael Stonebraker argues that 'big data' is really at least four different problems: big volumes with small analytics, big analytics, velocity, and variety. He comments on where each market is heading.
HN points to it as a thoughtful, first-principles take from a Turing award winner that cuts through NoSQL and big data hype.
7 comments from Hacker News
Whenever I see a young gullible engineer, all twinkly-eyed and bedazzled by the MongoDB hype (or any other NoSQL hype), I'll send him a link [1] on a rather interesting talk by a very thoughtful Turing award winning engineer named Michael Stonebraker. It takes a couple of days for the charm of NoSQL to wane off, but eventually they'll always see how they have been fooled into believing without a sane level of critique. [1] this video
I first heard of this 3 V's in a Michael Stonebreaker's talk[1]. For the uninitiated he's a legend in DBMS space, Turing award winner[2]. Highly recommend this and related talks by him, most of them are in YouTube. [1] this video [2] [LINK]
Yes, that slide deck in isolation looks an ad so it's probably better to get some background on Michael Stonebraker's "big picture" beliefs and core premises: ++ He believes SQL is the "right" and most proven access model. (Note that SQL does not mean RDBMS like Oracle/MSSQL.) ++ He believes in ACID ++ He believes that other db engines' (NoSQL, etc) approaches to gain speed and scaling of clusters by sacrificing SQL and ACID is wrong and his proof is that those other products end up eventually bolting on SQL and ACID anyway. I think a better presentation to flesh out these ideas is the following youtube video: this video It's 55 minutes long so to save time, HN readers may prefer to browse it by pressing "L" key to step through it quickly. Just read the slides shown behind him and if the bullet points look interesting, rewind and listen to his presentation. One can dwell on those SQL/ACID merits in isolation and consider separately, the question of whether VoltDB-as-a-product fulfills those ideals.
I read the Red Book when I was figuring out data architectures for my company. (the other book was Designing Data-Intensive Archictures by Martin Kleppmann) Stonebraker et al are very opinionated (especially about SQL and relational databases), but in a way I can accept because a lot of his thinking is based on first-principles. Stonebraker also has a string of database successes (Ingres, Postgres, Vertica etc.) which gives him enough street cred to prove he's not just spewing theory from an ivory tower. He's not necessarily correct in every opinion, but his opinions are interesting and worth considering. I enjoyed his talk on "Why Big Data is at least 4 different problems" this video
Stonebraker recently gave a talk at my school on where he thinks databases are headed in the future[0]. Definitely worth a watch. [0] this video