The Stack Overflow Podcast A distributed database that can withstand a meteor strike
Feb 12, 2025
Charlie Yang, CTO of OceanBase, dives into his journey from Alibaba to leading a groundbreaking distributed database that supports over a billion monthly users. He discusses the challenges faced by e-commerce giants in database management and how OceanBase emerged as a scalable solution. The conversation highlights performance advantages of native distributed databases over traditional sharding, with insights into transaction-focused databases and their integration with AI applications. Yang emphasizes the vital role of community contributions in shaping effective database solutions.
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OceanBase Advantages
- OceanBase, a native distributed database, offers advantages over sharded solutions like MySQL.
- It provides lossless disaster recovery (RPO=0) and significant cost savings (70% in Alipay's case).
OceanBase Architecture
- OceanBase is a native distributed database, not using sharding but a Paxos-based consensus protocol.
- Each piece of data has three replicas across three nodes, requiring a majority for transaction success.
Hangzhou Fiber Cut Incident
- In 2015, Alipay's Hangzhou data center experienced a partial outage when fiber optic cables were accidentally cut during construction.
- This incident highlighted the need for city-level disaster recovery, prompting Alipay to adopt a three-regions, five-centers architecture.