MyDistributed.Systems

FoundationDB is an open-source database that provides distributed ACID transactions. In this post, we will see how FoundationDB uses optimistic and multi-version concurrency control techniques to provide strictly serializable distributed transactions. 

C++ smart pointers let us get rid of the explicit deletion of dynamic memory. In this post, we want to see what are smart pointers and how we can properly use them. 

Spanner provides strictly serializable distributed transactions on a global scale. Spanner was introduced in 2012, and today, it is available as a managed service called Cloud Spanner via Google Cloud Platform. CockroachDB and YugaByteDB are two open-source products based on Spanner. In this post, we see how Spanner provides strictly serializable distributed transactions while being a replicated and partitioned database.  

Serializability is the strongest isolation level that a transactional system can offer. This level of isolation removes all possible anomalies due to concurrently running transactions. It provides a powerful abstraction for application developers. The letter "I" in ACID, stands for isolation, and when people talk about ACID transactions, they most likely mean serializable transactions. However, note that many systems that claim to provide ACID transactions, in reality, provide weaker isolation levels. In this post, we want to review serializability and see how a database system can provide serializability for single-node and distributed transactions.