Distributed SQL systems are databases that distribute data across multiple nodes or servers, often located in different geographical locations. They are designed to provide high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability, making them suitable for large-scale applications and complex workloads.
Popular Distributed SQL Systems
Here are some popular distributed SQL systems:
- CockroachDB: An open-source distributed SQL database built on a transactional and strongly-consistent key-value store. It scales horizontally, survives disk, machine, rack, and even datacenter failures with minimal latency disruption and no manual intervention. It supports strongly-consistent ACID transactions and provides a familiar SQL API for structuring, manipulating, and querying data.
- Google Cloud Spanner: A fully managed, mission-critical relational database service built from the ground up and battle-tested at Google. It combines the benefits of relational database structure with non-relational horizontal scale. It features transactional consistency at global scale, schemas, SQL querying, and automatic, synchronous replication for high availability.
- YugabyteDB: An open-source, high-performance distributed SQL database built on a scalable and fault-tolerant design inspired by Google Spanner. YugabyteDB is PostgreSQL wire compatible and supports advanced RDBMS features like stored procedures, triggers, and UDFs.
- Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora: Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud, while Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.
Comparison of Distributed SQL Systems
Here’s a comprehensive comparison of the above-mentioned distributed SQL systems:
| Distributed SQL System | Open Source | High Availability | Fault Tolerance | Scalability | Consistency Model | SQL Compatibility |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CockroachDB | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Strongly Consistent ACID Transactions | Yes |
| Google Cloud Spanner | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Synchronous Replication | Yes |
| YugabyteDB | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Strongly Consistent ACID Transactions | Yes (PostgreSQL Compatible) |
| Amazon RDS/Aurora | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Multi-AZ Replication | Yes (MySQL and PostgreSQL Compatible) |
Conclusion
Distributed SQL systems are a powerful tool for managing large-scale, complex data workloads. They offer the benefits of traditional SQL databases, such as ACID transactions and SQL queries, while also providing the scalability, high availability, and fault tolerance of NoSQL databases. When choosing a distributed SQL system, it’s important to consider the specific needs of your application and the features offered by each system.