Where database blog posts get flame-broiled to perfection
Well, look at this. A lovely, professionally written piece. It’s always a treat to see the official history being written in real-time. I had to read it a few times to fully appreciate the... artistry.
It’s just wonderful to see them talking about the “technical and operational challenges” with their “self-managed distributed PostgreSQL-compatible database.” That’s a wonderfully diplomatic way of saying ‘the on-call pager was literally melting into a puddle of plastic and despair.’ I think we called it ‘Project Chimera’ internally, but that’s probably not as friendly for the AWS case study. The challenges were certainly operational. And technical. In the same way a boat made of screen doors has challenges with buoyancy.
And the “evaluation criteria used to select a database solution.” Heartwarming. It reads like such a thoughtful, methodical process. I’m sure it had absolutely nothing to do with:
But my favorite part, the real triumph of marketing prose, is this little gem:
The migration to Aurora PostgreSQL improved their database infrastructure, achieving up to 75% increase in performance...
Now, a lesser person might read that and think, “Wow, Aurora is fast!” But those of us who were there, who saw the code, who were haunted by the query planner... we read that and think, “My god, how slow was the old system?”
A 75% performance increase isn’t a brag. It’s a confession. It’s like proudly announcing you replaced your horse-and-buggy with a Honda Civic and are now going 75% faster. We’re all very proud of you for joining the 20th century, let alone the 21st.
And the 28% cost savings? Incredible. It’s amazing how much you can save when you’re no longer paying a small army of brilliant, deeply traumatized engineers to perform nightly rituals just to keep the write-ahead log from achieving sentience and demanding a union. When you factor in the therapy bills for the ODS team and the budget for ‘retention bonuses’ for anyone who knew where the sharding logic was buried, I’d say 28% is a conservative estimate.
All in all, a great story. A real testament to… well, to finally making the sensible choice after exhausting all the other, more ‘innovative’ ones. It’s good to see them finally getting their house in order.
Truly. Onwards and upwards, I suppose. It’s a bold new era.