How To Choose The Right Database?

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Covering topics and trends in large-scale system design, from the authors of the best-selling System Design Interview series.

[@Nikolai4567]

GREAT video. I expected you to just suggest what you use yourself. You didn't. You describe general experience, stuff that is actually important and useful regardless of the technology. Respect

[@TheHaughtsauce]

Man, the wisdom in these videos is unmatched

[@chandragie]

Totally agree with "when it comes to database though, boring is good." I remember exactly Josh Long from Spring also mentioned about boring allows us to sleep peacefully at night, boring allows us to spend weekend with our family, boring allows us to go to holiday without worrying about work, I LOVE BORING! 😁

[@gergelyszakacs]

I'd like to add one more thing to the selection process: if you're tasked with designing a new system, make sure that you are absolutely sure about the actual load of the database and not the claimed one coming from the business stakeholders. Those guys tend to have overly ambitious goals (rather: dreams) about the growth of their businesses, which would make you choose a database technology and size the infrastructure under it that is a total overkill for a potentially much smaller problem. Besides that, great video, I love how down-to-earth your attitude is!

[@kakkoi_goru]

Amazing video💯.This wants me buy your book

[@samus4799]

I'd rather have too much capacity than not enough. If I were in a position where my businesses' critical structures were bottlenecked by an overzealous IT guy, they might actually get strangled.

[@imiebaka]

Very informative, sometimes companies just switch DB and later discovered the existing solution was still gold. In summary, study is key

[@JohnDoe-my5ip]

Try explaining that to your idiot product owner with an MBA who only thinks in sprint cycles… it’d be so nice to have a job where they let engineers do actual engineering…

[@anupamgh0sh]

"developers are naturally drawn to the new & shiny, like moths to a flame" 2:49 🤣😅

[@rumplstiltztinkerstein]

Just here learning everything that I wanted to learn when going to university.

[@leanpilar]

I like your videos, including this one. However, I believe the title should be 'How To Choose The Next Database?' instead of 'How To Choose The Right Database?' because I was expecting to see which requirements fit with which database, and less how to migrate problems.

[@joeng7424]

This channel knows me from inside out. I was fed with promises from PlanetScale and CockroachDB straight up for days and this drops off at the right moment.

[@bhooshan25]

Totally agree with "when it comes to database though, boring is good. The fancier the claim, the longer the disclaimer in the back.

[@djdankmemes9257]

By far this is one of my favorite programming channels. Extremely easy to understand and great visual presentation.

[@BrunoGabrielAraujoLebtag]

That's focus on Principles not technologies. Principles are timeless... technologies are not (and usually improvements from previous ones).

[@just_A_doctor]

So u want me to listen to u and ignore the discord software architect???????????????????😉

[@zixing467]

@@just_A_doctoryou fail to understand the point the writer was trying to make, it has nothing to do with credentials but rather how we approach problems in a philosophical manner as software engineers

[@Brajgamer]

​@@just_A_doctor😂 Yeah, here is one more from quora

[@alpiepho]

All of your videos are very well done. Thank you! Here is an idea for another video...show how to create these videos. A huge part of system design is "showing" the idea. It would be great to learn how you put these together, both from how they flow to the tools used for the awesome data visualization.

[@okaydoubleu]

A lot of the tricks here apply beyond choosing databases. A gem of a video😉

[@noamanahmed1]

Appreciate your content. I just cleared an interview where I was just asked one technical question regarding system design and your videos were big help.

[@JeremyChone]

Good video as usual. Our rule of thumb is "Lame Is the New Cool" as far as database choice.

[@JohnDoe-my5ip]

Just make sure that rule of thumb doesn’t lead you to Oracle’s sales department and you’re all good!

[@JeremyChone]

@@JohnDoe-my5ip Fair point. We like PostgreSQL.

[@최강재-y9c]

So informative. Always dive right into the real contents without bs. Thank you!

[@AlexKashie]

Jeez, I am so grateful to come across your channel... We don't deserve such content and explanantion. Thank you!

[@georgelza]

love the fact that you say at 1:30... look t what you have and if how you using it is not broken/problem before jumping on band wagon to simply pick a new db... as if you don't know whats wrong/how it is wrong you are liable to just end with the same problem again...

[@andriram5719]

Best video on a channel so far, this real-life experience and wisdom is really important

[@tharnendil]

I love your "try to play with what you have" first ❤️

[@nikitapodshivalov3573]

This channel is a gem.

[@longbranchgooberdapple2238]

I was expecting general info on how to choose database for new project but that works too, thank you :)

[@dinkopehar982]

This is expertise. To try everything for the current stack you have to make it work better before making decision to swap it for something else.

[@navitelogger]

As a junior project manager, your videos help me a lot

[@glebbondarenko67]

Thank you. I like the initial idea "are we really need to change the DB?"

[@pauldudley1273]

this is such a great video, it answered a lot of my questions.

[@11vag]

This channel is gold. Thank you.

[@morpheus4445]

Thanks for the video. I do wish it was much more specific though when considering different use cases for system design interviews.

[@xikusyaa]

your video on KZbin is just like a gem!

[@a314]

Very informative. What software do you use to create animations for these videos? Looks thorough and stunning

[@codegreenie3429]

Old is Gold. I use MYSQL for my software. Approaching 200K users and still runs under 1 second

[@robbybankston4238]

Agreed. Sometimes you do not need a new database platform. Sometimes you need to rewrite your application.

[@rohanpashankar8619]

Thank you. This really helped me understand the complexities involved in migrating databases.

[@OOnhar]

Such an effective, yet simple video on selecting the right database. Thank you.

[@TrippSC2]

Seeing the MS Access icon on here brings back some really bad memories. I worked for a company as pretty green sysadmin once that had a "homegrown" (in the sense that they paid to have it developed and didn't retain any source code) timekeeping software written in BASIC with an MS Access database as data persistence. Because Access has no real multi-user support, the software did a bunch of "clever" things to make locking work with multiple concurrent users. If there was ever an unexpected loss in connectivity to the database, at best the database lock was not removed and at worst the database was left in an inconsistent state and the lock was not removed. The databases needed a "Compact and Repair" operation run on it frequently, either for the reasons above or because the size of the database impacted performance, and that frequency accelerated the more data was in the database.

[@javisartdesign]

very short and concise explanation. thanks for share it

[@zachgoll]

This channel is a goldmine of info. Really great job!

[@mileselam641]

Simpler decision tree: Postgres by default. A Postgres offshoot for specific use cases like TimescaleDB for time series, Yugabyte for distributed, etc. If and only if you have a requirement that cannot be solved natively by Postgres like temporal tables in MS SQL Server or MariaDB, then choose the other engine. NoSQL only when you know for a fact that no SQL engine can adequately handle your problem (and you've already tried).

[@TRK--xk7bb]

When in doubt, postgres

[@henriquecapozzi]

very good presentation and tips thanks

[@mohali4338]

Only touches the surface for multiple problems (switching db, selecting db). By the way, I love your content, and I learn from it. Please continue the work.

[@charlesopuoro5295]

Thanks always for your insightful videos. They sure are a charitable contribution to our Industry.

[@DJazium]

This is a wonderful video. Thanks I needed to watch this!

[@davidbeauchemin3046]

To add a little nuance about transactional guarantees, it mostly does not remove one (or few) of the transactional guarantees. Is it more that it is untimely ACID. You might, on writing time, not be ACID, but untimely the database will become ACID. And the real question is, do you need ACID on write all the time for all the use cases? Maybe not.

[@raymondmichael4987]

Very powerful stuff you got here. I wish to learn how to do those benchmark testing

[@phildewar5446]

Firebird SQL DB is a powerful and free versioning option

[@aungmyooo9692]

All of your tutorial is very clear and easy to understand because of animation explanation.I always wonder which tool you use to create this animation? Could you please share?

[@ReflectionOcean]

Mitigation before migration. Boring is good. Read "Limits" and "FAQ" in manual. Understand the trade-offs.

[@TJDeez]

Sharting is never acceptable 😂 In all seriousness, thanks for this great video sir.

[@Zizaco]

Portability (not bound to 1 cloud provider), Open-source, Battle tested, Horizontally scalable, Performant, Easy/Built-in Replication (high-availability), Powerful schema definition, Excelente querying/aggregation capabilities, ACID Compliant, Change streams, and Productive (dev speed) = MongoDB MongoDB has been the to-go choice on most of the projects that I've worked on recently. Other DBs that we've chosen often are: Redis and Neo4j. Postgres is perhaps the best SQL choice. But SQL/Relational no longer makes much sense in application/operational use cases. An "ALTER TABLE" is enough to take a whole application down.

[@JohnDoe-my5ip]

Multicloud is a convenient lie we tell ourselves. That vendor lock-in is largely unavoidable and can only be mitigated. Migrating cloud providers is only marginally less challenging than migrating database engines.

[@paulurban2]

Yeah zero downtime schema changes are essential.

[@Zizaco]

@@JohnDoe-my5ip Portability also means being able to run it in a CI / CD / Dev / Local environnement. Good luck with that if you are using DynamoDB or some exclusive flavor of postgres.

[@carolinegr]

Sharding an existing database also takes considerable effort though. Especially if it means the clients to the db need to piece together data from different shards.

[@ByteByteGo]

Great point. It is really about tradeoffs, isn't it?

[@jamejame8244]

how about scylladb? i never use before, normaly use mongodb in project.

[@KashfiFahim]

whoa look at that new intro. Very nice.

[@wilfred-almeida]

Apart from the awesome knowledge💯 the animation is fantastic. Kudos to the editor!🤌👏

[@ByteByteGo]

Have to agree. Our editors for the illustration and animation are talented. 🙌

[@CarlosWashingtonMercado]

Thank you, sir, for sharing your knowledge in this video.

[@rodneylives]

This is good information! I love your style and straight-forward presentation of facts.

[@ByteByteGo]

Thank you for the feedback. We try our best to respect our viewer's time investment in our contents.

[@rahulsrma26]

Great video. Love new animations. 👍

[@GetMarvelDeals]

@bytebytego I think you could split the vidoes into chapters for easy access.

[@xzdasx]

I have a hate/love relationship with this Guy. I love how much I am learning every time I see any video. Also, I hate much much I don't know.

[@alexanderpoplooukhin7448]

Very cool video. You gave a lot of useful information in so short video. Thank you.

[@ravindranaths513]

Could you please make a video on Wide column vs column family vs columnar vs column oriented DB

[@stachowi]

Fantastic video.

[@king0s]

I revisit this and learn something new every time. Also has more deep System design in his channel, every single one is a gem. awesome visuals along with awesome audio direction. . ❤ and 🙏 🙇🏾‍♂️ from Chennai 🇮🇳

[@jibin7277]

where do I find invitation link for the Slack channel mentioned in the video?

[@leomysky]

Wonderful video, thank you

[@RaghuRam2k14]

Rare gem!! Thank you for the video

[@mubarhackk]

I want to design e-commerce web site. Which DB do you prefer?

[@YogeshDorbala]

@bytebytego These videos are great, thank you! Could you please add a video explaining the benefits of each major database and their drawbacks? Would love to see a comparative discussion on the options available from you. Thanks!

[@sachinsuryavanshi3]

Do we have a tools where we can do the animation using code?

[@malhaar707]

can you let us know how do you create your videos, i mean interactive diagrams that you use in the videos.

[@pankist]

Sounds like a meditation. I almost closed my eyes while still following the words on the unconscious level.

[@garrettross7987]

Anyone know the software he uses to make the diagrams?

[@fotiusciante]

Couldn't agree more with this video!

[@YudhaTPutra]

Very informative and useful video,thanks

[@walid7189]

that was just beautiful

[@guliyevshahriyar]

thanks for precious advice!

[@allezvenga7617]

Thanks for your sharing

[@rajatbansal3769]

What tools you are using to create these system design videos?

[@ThangTran-hi3es]

Thank you so much.

[@hammadahmed5363]

Great video. Could you please tell me which tool you use to created these animated slides. Thanks

[@ByteByteGo]

It takes a team. We have some talented editors for illustration and animation, with the help of tools like Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator, etc. It takes many hours for each video.

[@fk33t29x]

I want to know the answer and think about this topic long long long time ago, thanks!

[@michaeledwardharris]

Lol that was really useful. The limits page is a jam indeed.

[@chaitu5736]

Excellent advice

[@primingdotdev]

sage advice, thanks.

[@gopinathpavani74]

considered DB2 on zos or linux unix windows . We have all features we are discussing

[@rahulaga]

superb !! you mentioned `join chat room for discussions` which chat room you refer to ?

[@VishalSharma-dn8ob]

I see there is a discord server mentioned in the video. What's the invite link for that ?

[@juamsv]

thank you, its as very clarify.

[@SanjayKumar-rn8eh]

I expected comparisons between different database offerings in this video based on the title of the video. Good stuff though.

[@jaimecarranza2509]

This content is very nice, thank you for making it.

[@ByteByteGo]

Thank you for the encouragement. This is hard work, and this is very much appreciated.

[@KuopassaTv]

Many cases the most suitable db is flat file, because instead of millions of users it's just the dev and googlebot.

[@terrencewells2131]

I love the channel

[@sivanagarajupachipulusu]

it would be great to know if had references or papers

[@deekshaprusty]

I heard many terms which I don't understand. E.g P99. Is there any other video where you talk about different parameters with which DB should be measured? Or with other db concepts?

[@Bump2310]

Take the opportunity to search these terms and understand and make notes about them - while these guys are very helpful, you can't expected them to present this technical content at a completely ELI5 level.

[@ByteByteGo]

We do plan to make some videos on system design fundamentals in the future. In the meantime, like others have suggested, write down the terms you don’t understand, do a bit of homework on your own, and don’t hesitate to come back for more questions. We are all beginners on some things and at some point. We have all been there. Hang in there.

[@deekshaprusty]

@@ByteByteGo👍 thank you

[@max3446]

"Measure p99 of everything - average is not relevant", would anyone mind elaborating on this? I would imagine average latency is still pretty important in most cases.

[@paulurban2]

The truth is you need to look at both.

[@ethanendures]

What do you think about surrealdb?

[@dominikvonlavante6113]

Also, as a general piece of advice, unless you absolutely know, to 100% certainty, that a relational database won't work for your use-case, just stick to a relational database and spend a lot of thought into data modeling.

[@ochibella9562]

Great content 👍🏾

[@smriet]

It would be useful to retitle the video to "When and how to migrate your existing DB"