Run Your Applications Worldwide Without Worrying About The Database With Planetscale

Episode • Dec 12, 2022 • 49m

Summary

One of the most critical aspects of software projects is managing its data. Managing the operational concerns for your database can be complex and expensive, especially if you need to scale to large volumes of data, high traffic, or geographically distributed usage. Planetscale is a serverless option for your MySQL workloads that lets you focus on your applications without having to worry about managing the database or fight with differences between development and production. In this episode Nick van Wiggeren explains how the Planetscale platform is implemented, their strategies for balancing maintenance and improvements of the underlying Vitess project with their business goals, and how you can start using it today to free up the time you spend on database administration.

Announcements

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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Nick van Wiggeren about Planetscale, a serverless and globally distributed MySQL database as a service

Interview

Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you describe what Planetscale is and the story behind it?
What are the core problems that you are solving with the Planetscale platform?
- How might an engineering team address those challenges in the absence of Planetscale/Vitess?
Can you describe how Planetscale is implemented?
- What are some of the addons that you have had to build on top of Vitess to make Planetscale
What are the impacts that a serverless database has on the way teams approach their application/platform design and development?
metrics exposed to help users optimize their usage
What is your policy/philosophy for determining what capabilities to include in Vitess and what belongs in the Planetscale platform?
What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Planetscale/Vitess used?
What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Planetscale?
When is Planetscale the wrong choice?
What do you have planned for the future of Planetscale?

Contact Info

@nickvanwig on Twitter
LinkedIn
nickvanw on GitHub

Parting Question

From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?

Closing Announcements

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The Machine Learning Podcast helps you go from idea to production with machine learning.
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Links

The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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