Software Engineer based in Pittsburgh, PA. Engineering Manager at Google, building large-scale data systems. Creator of rqlite[1], the lightweight, distributed database built on SQLite.
https://www.philipotoole.com
[1] https://www.rqlite.io
Submissions
Proving to Fable I maintain the repo
philipotoole.com
3 points·by otoolep··0 comments
Data integrity in rqlite: what it checks and what it doesn't
rqlite.io
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Humanoid robots won't surprise us when they arrive
philipotoole.com
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Taking Control of the SQLite WAL
philipotoole.com
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The eerie abandoned vehicles in Chernobyl's 'dead zone'
bbc.com
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How (and why) rqlite takes control of the SQLite Write-Ahead Log
philipotoole.com
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Show HN: rqlite – the fault-tolerant DB built on SQLite – v10.0 released
github.com
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Open Decision-Making (2021)
web.stanford.edu
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The source code was the moat. But not anymore
philipotoole.com
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The Fall of the Nerds
noahpinion.blog
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Talking to LLMs has improved my thinking
philipotoole.com
186 points·by otoolep··146 comments
The Engineering Management Myths Star Trek Teaches (2022)
philipotoole.com
4 points·by otoolep··1 comments
Common misunderstandings about large software companies
philipotoole.com
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The liquid air alternative to fossil fuels
bbc.com
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Common misunderstandings about large software companies
philipotoole.com
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Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
philipotoole.com
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The number one sign you're watching an AI video
bbc.com
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rqlite 9.2 – the distributed SQLite database – fast restarts with GB datasets
philipotoole.com
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[untitled]
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OpenTelemetry Protocol Comes to Google Cloud Observability
One application that comes up over and over again -- wanting relational modeling, along with HA, but with low operational costs. People sometimes start with Postgres, then need to set up HA, and find it's a lot of work. They realize that their data set requirements are not huge, don't need fancy features, so start to think Postgres is overkill. That's what Replicated found.
I grew up in Ireland, moved to the USA as an adult. European government is clearly Hobbes in model, the US Lockean.
In Europe the individual has almost no legal reason to use force, and force by individuals is considered illegitimate. The "Sovereign" has all the coercive power in European states. In the US, however, a certain amount of legitimate force explicitly remains with the individual i.e. the 2nd amendment. (I am not making a value judgement here).
Of course, Europe has government with the consent of the governed, so is Lockean in that sense. But the balance of force between the "Sovereign" and the people in Europe is all Hobbes. You only notice it when you move to the US and compare it to Europe.
Europe had centuries of religious and civil war. It's not surprising Hobbes won out.
rqlite creator here, happy to answer any questions.
As for reliability - it's a fault-tolerant, highly available system. Reliability is the reason it exists. :-) If you're asking about quality and test coverage, you might like to check out these resources:
>First of all, does anyone believe that highly scrutinized and bureaucratic functions are general high quality services?
This is the only part of your response that doesn't quite sit right with me. There could be many "highly scrutinized and bureaucratic functions" out there that are working very well, you just don't notice because they work so well. There could be a selection-effect here.
Quality is a big deal for me[1]. But I think you're defining "quality" too narrowly in this context. "Quality" could also mean "allows everyone, at scale, reliably, to do what they need to do." The US Tax Filing system (and its associated software) meets that goal.
I did introduce Queued Writes[1] since that talk, allowing you to trade off performance versus immediate durability. It may interest you -- network is much less of a factor then, and you should get a 10-100x increase in throughput.
Will it allow you to reach the same scale in terms of data set size that Elasticsearch supports? Almost certainly no, but it might be enough depending on your use case.
rqlite creator here. I have performed a fair amount of performance testing, some of which I outlined in a talk to the CMU Database Group a few years ago. Details:
An important thing to note: this testing was done 4+ years ago, on moderately-powerful hardware for the time. With higher-end, more modern hardware you may get even better results.
Nit: dqlite is a library, it is not a network-exposed database like rqlite is. Sure, it requires connecting to other nodes over the network, but local access is via in-process. In contrast one connects with rqlite over the network - HTTP specifically.
rqlite[1] author here. Just to be clear, rqlite is not SQLite but rewritten in Go. rqlite uses the vanilla C code, and calls it from Go[2]. I consider that an important advantage over other approaches -- rqlite gets all the benefits of rock-solid[3] SQLite. As result there are no questions about the quality of the database engine.
You are right that when someone (a human) submits a PR it didn't cost me anything (short of my time to review it). But those folks are not a team, not someone I could rely on or direct. Open-source projects -- successful ones -- often turn into a company, and then hire a dev team. We all know this.
I have no plans to commercialize rqlite, and I certainly couldn't afford a team of human developers. But I've got Copilot (and Gemini when I use it) now. So, in a sense, I now do have a team. And it's allowed me to fix bugs and add small features I wouldn't have bothered to in the past. It's definitely faster (20 mins to fire up my computer, write the code, push the PR vs. 5 mins to create the GitHub issue, assign to Copilot, review, and merge).
Case in point: I'm currently adding change-data-capture to rqlite. Development is going faster, but it's also more erratic because I'm reviewing more, and coding less. It reminds me of when I've been a TL of a software team.
https://www.philipotoole.com
[1] https://www.rqlite.io