RocksDB with Dhruba Borthakur and Igor Canadi
RocksDB is a storage engine based on the log-structured merge tree data structure. RocksDB was developed at Facebook to provide a tool for embedded databases. The code for RocksDB is a fork of LevelDB, an embedded database built by Google for the Chrome browser.
Every database has a storage engine. The storage engine is the low-level data structure that manages the data in the database. RocksDB is widely used in database applications where a log-structured merge tree is preferable to a b-tree. These tend to be write-heavy workloads.
In past shows, we have explored applications of RocksDB in our coverage of databases like TiDB, data-intensive applications like Smyte, and data platforms like Rockset. In today’s episode, Dhruba Borthakur and Igor Canadi join for a deep dive into how RocksDB works. Dhruba was the original creator of RocksDB, and Igor is a former Facebook engineer who worked on RocksDB in its early days. Both Dhruba and Igor work at Rockset.
We talk about the log-structured merge tree, discuss why an LSM has higher write throughput than storage engines based on a b-tree, and evaluate some of the use cases for RocksDB.
