When I first learned about isolation levels in databases I was shocked that databases could “lie” to me. I think like most devs focused on the product end I just expected databases to be a magical black box that worked perfectly. Which I assumed was just the strictest definition of serializability without really thinking about it.
After watching some of Andy Pavlo’s lectures[1] it all just dawned on me: Databases are just like any other piece of code you write and have to think about all the tradeoffs with algorithms and book keeping to keep things efficient and providing the guarantees you want.
I highly recommend that lecture series.
Shameless plug: the reason I watched those lectures was to understand the internals of DBs better because I started working at Convex. Where we try to make sure things like this is something an app developer doesn’t have to worry about. Though we do mention it in our docs[2] for the curious.
After watching some of Andy Pavlo’s lectures[1] it all just dawned on me: Databases are just like any other piece of code you write and have to think about all the tradeoffs with algorithms and book keeping to keep things efficient and providing the guarantees you want.
I highly recommend that lecture series.
Shameless plug: the reason I watched those lectures was to understand the internals of DBs better because I started working at Convex. Where we try to make sure things like this is something an app developer doesn’t have to worry about. Though we do mention it in our docs[2] for the curious.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWS8LEQAUVc&list=PLSE8ODhjZX... [2] https://docs.convex.dev/database/advanced/occ