The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

The 1000x faster financial database (Interview)

54 snips
Apr 2, 2025
Joran Dirk Greef, the creator of TigerBeetle, shares his journey in developing a revolutionary financial database that boasts transaction speeds 1000 times faster than traditional systems. He discusses the challenges of general-purpose databases and how innovations in query design and concurrency control have redefined performance. Joran also highlights the importance of deterministic testing for reliability and the role of open source in the space, all while playfully engaging with the concept of using the Zig programming language for development.
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ANECDOTE

The 76 TPS Limit

  • Joran Dirk Greef consulted on a central bank switch project and faced a performance optimization challenge.
  • Despite hardware upgrades, the MySQL database couldn't exceed 76 transactions per second.
INSIGHT

Row Locks as Bottleneck

  • The performance bottleneck wasn't hardware but row locks held during SQL transactions across network latency.
  • This limited the database to around 1000 transactions per second, regardless of hardware.
INSIGHT

The Contention Problem

  • Contention on a small number of "hot" accounts, like popular stocks, exacerbates the row lock problem.
  • This necessitates a specialized transaction database, not a general-purpose one.
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