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by mdaniel
977 days ago
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> In addition to that we built a custom columnar database I did some digging in your blog history and it seems that is referencing https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2022/07/22/frostdb-i... and digging into the "but why?" section <https://github.com/polarsignals/frostdb#why-you-should-use-f...> seems to imply you favored the embedded feature over having something standalone, but I would enjoy hearing (or reading a blog post!) about why you felt it was a better use of your engineering to make your own columar DB versus using one of the existing columanr dbs that I have seen referenced a ton in other Show HN announcements around both logging and metrics services |
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The big one that existing columnar databases can’t do (or not well), is the ability to search and aggregate on user defined dimensions (think prometheus-style labels). Influx 3.0 is the only other columnar database that is (now) available that was engineered specifically to be able to do this. The good folks at honeycomb came to the same conclusion that this type of columnar database (wide column) is necessary to build Observability with exceptional user experience. Plus we now own our future and can do any kind of optimization while other companies (and I’ve spoken to them) constantly fear ClickHouse relicensing or otherwise destroying their business.
//edit: we call this feature dynamic columns: https://github.com/polarsignals/frostdb#dynamic-columns