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While at Velocity 2011, I asked Basho<\/a>‘s Justin Sheehy<\/a> to tell us how things have been going at Basho and what the current state of the NoSQL world is. We also have a good discussion of how developers are finding the “post-relational database world” and how GitHub plays into Basho’s business.<\/p>\n As usual with these un-sponsored episodes, I haven’t spent time to clean up the transcript. If you see us saying something crazy, check the original audio first. There are time-codes where there were transcription problems.<\/i><\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Well, hello everybody! Here we are in Santa Clara at Velocity 2011 and I ran into an old friend of RedMonk and I thought I\u2019ll get an update about kind of what\u2019s going on and then what\u2019s going on in the NoSQL area. What don\u2019t you introduce yourself?<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Sure. I am Justin Sheehy. I am the CTO of Basho Technologies. We make Riak, Webmachine, and some other open source software.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> So I mean how things have been going for Basho?<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Oh, it\u2019s been going fantastic. The past year or so has been really exciting. Things are looking better on the money front and more important on the developer\u2019s front.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> A good front.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. That\u2019s all that matters. So we are looking for — the next few months are really going to be amazing. We\u2019ve got a fantastic team that\u2019s only gotten bigger and better. In the next few months, people even just watching GitHub are going to see things start flying really fast and furious.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Well, you know what, why don\u2019t we rabbit hole into that first? How are you fitting GitHub into — I mean obviously, the development side, but how does that fit into the business side?<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Sure. So a big part of our business is it\u2019s not just a software business; it\u2019s an open source software business and today, the easiest and best way to engage with the open source community, no question about it is GitHub. And to me, that\u2019s much less about the specific technologies involved, Git\u2019s great and all that, but it\u2019s much more about the way people are used to interacting there and it\u2019s a very contribution and communication heavy environment.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Since we moved our development to GitHub, the amount of community involvement with the code as opposed to just the ideas and the documentation has really shot up and it\u2019s been great for the product.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> That\u2019s interesting. So there\u2019s sort of trackable more contributions code-wise.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Yes, no question about it. The rate of people actually contributing improvement and \u2013<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> And do you pay attention to like people who follow your stuff and who fork it and things like that.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> We look at it and we track it because you kind of be crazy not to sense the information is there, but I am skeptical of the things like number of followers and things like that and maybe even number of forks mean all that much compared to things like number of poll requests. I mean that\u2019s heavy engagement.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah, I guess —<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> But if someone does the fork and then does a bunch of work in it, I\u2019d like to see that.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> But I also see that there are lot of projects out there that get forked a lot and by itself, that doesn\u2019t yet mean anything. It\u2019s been an early indicator, but to me it\u2019s when people start talking back and that can be in the form of poll requests or lots of other things that\u2019s really exciting.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> So for people that don\u2019t know, can you explain the portfolio that you guys have of your core products?<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Sure. So our core product and the things we sell is Riak. It\u2019s a distributed database and two biggest reasons people go to it are for extremely high availability and for easy scalability and that easy part is a big deal; it\u2019s really easy to install, really easy to operate, really easy to interact with the developer. Around that, we\u2019ve built an ecosystem of other open source tools, the sole niches we cared about and that we put out there in the open source community. Things like Webmachine, which is a toolkit for building REST styled applications, things like Rebar, which is a build tool, and all those sorts of things, but RIAK is the product that the company is built on.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> And being a database to super-generalize it, what kind of data are people storing in it most commonly?<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Sure. So from a business point of view, there\u2019s certainly not a — I would love it if there was a vertical to focus on. But it doesn\u2019t work that way, just the same way that it doesn\u2019t work the way for MySQL or Oracle or anything like that. It\u2019s not the same shape of a database as, say, the ones I just named. It\u2019s not a traditional table-based relational database. But we\u2019ve found that the minor adjustments that people from the relational way of thinking to the way that they started in Riak are very small compared to the operational adjustments they would have to make to solve their availability and scalability problems with those kinds of systems.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Right. And sort of performance benefits, like let be reload the question, but what it is for someone who is kind of used to SQL or relational stuff or the traditional way for doing database is like what — can you up through the sort of like a typical, I want to use a charge word like enlightenment, but how do they get to enlightenment to like oh, I get it. Here is why I should be using this rather than MySQL or —<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Sure. So I actually don\u2019t think people shouldn\u2019t be using that other stuff. There are ton of applications and I can think a couple of times really recently that I was saying to someone, I think the right answer to your problem today is MySQL.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Those are fantastic technologies<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Or Oracle Coherence.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Oh, sure! Yeah, Cameron and company build a great product, but there are cases at last about — it has almost nothing to do with SQL or anything like that. In fact, most people using the databases that speaks SQL to them, a lot of the time you are not writing SQL. They are going through ORMs or some other document layer and if they are doing that, the impedance mismatch that they\u2019ve got to the relational database is huge already and they don\u2019t actually have to change much about the way that they are thinking about their own code. There are object layers and document layers for things like Riak too. So for a lot of the programmers that happen to be using relational business, most of them aren\u2019t really using it for relations anyway. Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> So from many of those people that aren\u2019t using it for huge ad-hoc relational queries most of time, it’s really easy. And then when they do want to do interesting ad-hoc queries, yeah, we have a different programming model, but that part is not hard.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Right, right. Well that makes sense. So then broadening the topic a little bit like we were actually talking about this one while recording, I kind of forget when NoSQL kind of started, but it did seem to reach like an apex of fury.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Oh, definitely.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> — like about a year ago or so, and you always know when these things nowadays reach some fury when, there’s almost a redefinition of what the word is. Now I remember there was a big discussion of what is the in-home \u2013<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Oh, yeah, definitely.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Remember that? So anyhow, I mean, like; well, first off like how long do you think this, whatever you want to call this space has been, this sort of post-relational database is the only thing sort of –?<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Sure! So I started really 2008 and 2009.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> You had the first NoSQL events, they named themselves that, right then, and it\u2019s been going ever since. But I think while you could use phrases like post-relational or whatever it\u2019s referred to the artifacts, the databases, I think that the term NoSQL doesn\u2019t make any sense to the technology category, right.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a negation, or you can play games all there trying to redefine what the No is, and maybe it\u2019s not only hey; but even if you do that, it still doesn\u2019t tell you anything about the category, right. It doesn\u2019t tell anything what the things are.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> And so instead of trying to play games with the word to make that okay, I think it\u2019s not a category at all. But what it is and what has been going on for the past, I guess three or four years now, is I think of it more as a movement, and by that up, a series of events in time. And what that movement is about or it gets and what they know is really about, is about a monoculture of database architecture, right, in the sense that a few decades ago, Oracle 1. Oracle 1, the early database was predating, MySQL certainly predating Modern and PostgreSQL.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong>\t— and so on, and Microsoft SQL and all these. Oracle defined the database architecture, everybody else followed, everybody did now. And so for the past couple of decades when people were building a new software project, they\u2019d make a whole bunch of interesting choices, right; what languages to write in, what operating systems to use, but they weren\u2019t really making any interesting choice about their database architecture because choosing MySQL or Postgres or Oracle isn\u2019t — that’s a choice on detailed features —<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> And like you\u2019re saying, they built up the whole O\/R mapping rule to kind of isolate themselves from that unmovable choice.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Right, and so if NoSQL is anything, it\u2019s a movement that\u2019s sort of breaking up that monoculture of database architecture, right, a lot of the products that get put together and various software components as part of NoSQL are part of a movement; they’re not part of a useful category, right. Many of them have very little in common except that they\u2019re all are sort of objection to the idea that there’s only one way that\u2019s same to think about structuring and storing your data.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> And it\u2019s not that you need to switch from the old one-way to a new one-way, it\u2019s equally broken. But the idea that just like you choose operating systems and you choose programming languages and you chose frameworks, you can choose database architectures. And that’s what’s been going on, and I think it\u2019s finally starting to reach a point of, sort of general awareness. Even a lot of people that, in a lot of situations quite rightly still want to pick the same one they picked before, are becoming aware that there’s a choice, and I think that’s a big deal.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah. So you definitely feel a lot more exploring of other options nowadays.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah, yeah. Now I guess that is like, that was the lasting effect like where the NoSQL stuff is a denominate. Now I think you\u2019re right; it is, people are aware of it, as we used to say, it\u2019s kind of on the shortlist.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Like people are willing to consider it.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> — instead of just thinking it some wacky experimental thing.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Even if they don’t consider it, they know they could have, and that\u2019s what wasn\u2019t even true before, right. Most developers five years ago weren\u2019t even aware that there was an interesting choice for data storage other than the Oracle-shaped model, but whether it was embody to MySQL or Postgres or Oracle or whatever.<\/p>\n And so now, they know that choice exists, just like say someone that only ever programmed in Java, right, just to pick an example of something outside databases, might choose no, I’m never going to write my programs in C++, and they never choose that and it\u2019s never on their personal shortlist.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehey:<\/strong> They know that choice exists. And that’s the piece that’s new in databases right now. And that the mainstream software community is staring to become aware that a choice exists, even the people that aren\u2019t really caring about their choice themselves just yet.<\/p>\n Michael Cot\u00e9:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Well, great! Well, thanks for the update.<\/p>\n Justin Sheehy:<\/strong> Well, thanks a lot. It was my pleasure.<\/p>\n Disclosure:<\/b> GitHub is a client.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While at Velocity 2011, I asked Basho‘s Justin Sheehy to tell us how things have been going at Basho and what the current state of the NoSQL world is. We also have a good discussion of how developers are finding the “post-relational database world” and how GitHub plays into Basho’s business. Transcript As usual with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,23],"tags":[55,125,230,432,548,653,802],"class_list":["post-6892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences","category-open-source","category-programming","tag-justinsheehy","tag-basho","tag-database","tag-justin-sheehy","tag-nosql","tag-riak","tag-velocityconf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/cote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Transcript<\/h2>\n
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