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In this episode of Database School, I chat with Glauber Costa, CEO of Turso, about their audacious decision to rewrite SQLite from the ground up.
We cover the technical motivations, open contribution philosophy, and how deterministic simulation testing is unlocking new levels of reliability.
Get your free SQLite reference guide: https://highperformancesqlite.com/products/sqlite-reference-guide.
Follow Glauber:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/glcst
Turso: https://tur.so/af
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Website: https://aaronfrancis.com - find articles, podcasts, courses, and more.
Database school: https://databaseschool.com
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro to guest Glauber Costa
00:58 - Glauber's background and path to databases
02:23 - Moving to Texas and life changes
05:32 - The origin story of Turso
07:55 - Why fork SQLite in the first place?
10:28 - SQLite’s closed contribution model
12:00 - Launching libSQL as an open contribution fork
13:43 - Building Turso Cloud for serverless SQLite
14:57 - Limitations of forking SQLite
17:00 - Deciding to rewrite SQLite from scratch
19:08 - Branding mistakes and naming decisions
22:29 - Differentiating Turso (the database) from Turso Cloud
24:00 - Technical barriers that led to the rewrite
28:00 - Why libSQL plateaued for deeper improvements
30:14 - Big business partner request leads to deeper rethink
31:23 - The rewrite begins
33:36 - Early community traction and GitHub stars
35:00 - Hiring contributors from the community
36:58 - Reigniting the original vision
39:40 - Turso’s core business thesis
42:00 - Fully pivoting the company around the rewrite
45:16 - How GitHub contributors signal business alignment
47:10 - SQLite’s rock-solid rep and test suite challenges
49:00 - The magic of deterministic simulation testing
53:00 - How the simulator injects and replays IO failures
56:00 - The role of property-based testing
58:54 - Offering cash for bugs that break data integrity
1:01:05 - Deterministic testing vs traditional testing
1:03:44 - What it took to release Turso Alpha
1:05:50 - Encouraging contributors with real incentives
1:07:50 - How to get involved and contribute
1:20:00 - Upcoming roadmap: indexes, CDC, schema changes
1:23:40 - Final thoughts and where to find Turso
