Top all-time · #3068
Domas Mituzas
Personal blog · dom.assystemsdata
Domas Mituzas writes domas mituzas, a personal blog at dom.as about systems and data. Since 2011, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “MySQL does not need SQL”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Domas Mituzas, a former Facebook and Wikipedia engineer, writes about MySQL, durability and query optimization. HN readers cite his posts as experience-based MySQL material.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- MySQL does not need SQL3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-08-04
- MySQL is bazillion times faster than MemSQL3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-06-26
- On removing files (2016)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-04-25
- Stonebraker trapped in Stonebraker 'fate worse than death'2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-07-09
What Hacker News says?
> Generally in MySQL we send queries massaged to a point where optimizer doesn’t have to think about anything. https://dom.as/2015/07/30/on-order-by-optimization/ - Wisdom from the guy who managed to get MySQL to work at facebook scale.
Comment linking /2015/07/30/on-order-by-optimization/
on “Leaving MySQL”Submitted MySQL is bazillion times faster than MemSQL as a story · 339 points
HN discussionFacebook guys as I understand it did look carefully at PostgreSQL; at least some of the engineers are very familiar with its internals. They found MySQL satisfactory for a variety of reasons including ability to engineer better performance but also replication which was much better in MySQL for a long time. In fact, for an interesting perspective on the "Facebook stuck on MySQL" topic see [1]. Interestingly much Fac…
Comment linking /2011/07/08/stonebraker-trapped/
on “Scaling to 100M: MySQL Is a Better NoSQL”Submitted How InnoDB lost its advantage as a story · 69 points
HN discussionCheck this "web scale" out: http://smalldatum.blogspot.com (via http://dom.as/2014/03/31/mongo-io/ )
Comment linking /2014/03/31/mongo-io/
on “ Subtly Bad Things Linux May Be Doing To PostgreSQL ”Submitted On “order by” optimization as a story · 33 points
HN discussion> I would take 100x increase in compilation times for a release build over a 2x increase in development time due to manual optimization. If you're referring to super-optimization, it can take far more than 100x and isn't something that is being "classically automated" as humans likely can't do it in the first place. In addition, super-optimization will yield better results if you give it a better starting point. It'…
Comment linking /2009/07/27/profile-guided-optimization-with-gcc/
on “Random Acts of Optimization”Submitted Stonebraker trapped in Stonebraker 'fate worse than death' as a story · 30 points
HN discussionYeah, I am the engineer mentioned in the article, and I agree the explanation doesn't really work. The pieces of the explanation that ended up in the article itself don't add up to a coherent explanation. The fault for that is mostly mine. In hindsight, my original explanation was too long and too elaborate to be helpful. It's a good reminder that it is easy to go to far with an analogy and end up complicating the t…
Comment linking /2009/06/26/embarrassment/
on “The impact of Prince’s death on Wikipedia”Submitted MySQL Sucks at Accepting Connections as a story · 12 points
HN discussionMySQL does need so much improvements https://dom.as/2016/08/03/mysql-does-not-need-sql/
Comment linking /2016/08/03/mysql-does-not-need-sql/
on “Thoughts on Uber’s List of Postgres Limitations”Submitted Linux memory management for servers as a story · 5 points
HN discussion- nl · 2013-11-25
Note that Stonebraker makes some good points, but there are many ways to build scalability and Stonebraker is too fast to dismiss many. In particular, his criticism of traditional databases seems based more on philosophy rather than evidence. I'd advise reading both sides of the story: http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2009/09/16/relational-databas... http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2009/07/03/column-stores-and-... http…
Comment linking /2011/07/08/stonebraker-trapped/
on “How To Make An Infinitely Scalable RDBMS” Submitted On removing files (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou're right that memSQL absoutely crawls when it is set to "fully-durable" mode where it has to sync write to the disk. But it was never built for the use-case, and I guess that's missing the point. memSQL, AFAIK, was built for highly concurrent reads and writes. It uses lock-free in-memory data structures, couple that with an eventually-durable mode, in addition to optimizing queries by the way of re-compiling SQL…
Comment linking /2012/06/26/memsql-rage/
on “Re: MemSQL the “world's fastest database”? (2012)”Submitted On Removing Files (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThen I guess my point about UDB doesn't require schema change will still stand then? Looking at https://github.com/facebookarchive/linkbench , the table structure looks pretty much "final". And judging by https://dom.as/2015/07/30/on-order-by-optimization/ , the access pattern is pretty much fixed as well.
Comment linking /2015/07/30/on-order-by-optimization/
on “Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL (2016)”Submitted MySQL does not need SQL as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDurability will typically be very expensive to implement unless you have a fast SSD or RAID controller with NVRAM, so it will skew the test considerably if you make MySQL offer it, but say MongoDB does not have to. But I do recommend it for the majority of people. Shameless plug: http://www.tocker.ca/2013/06/19/deciding-whether-or-not-to-m... Also: http://dom.as/2013/08/09/on-durability/ (Domas works on MySQL@Facebo…
Comment linking /2013/08/09/on-durability/
on “Unfair comparisons”Submitted MySQL does not need SQL as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSome MySQL vs PG tests done by Domas (of Facebook & Wikipedia fame) show some interesting differences between MySQL and PG for an in-memory read only test. I don't think there are any 50x differences though. http://dom.as/2010/11/08/random-poking/
Comment linking /2010/11/08/random-poking/
on “Everybody thinks SQL joins are slow-is it because MySQL doesn't have hash joins?”Submitted Where is MySQL innovation nowadays? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDoes anyone know if MemSQL has improved in ACID compliance (especially full durability performance) in the nearly 2 years since Domas previously[0] dissected it? MemSQL sounds too good to be true sometimes, but I want to believe. Just wish it was open source. [0] http://dom.as/2012/06/26/memsql-rage/ (hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4162488 )
Comment linking /2012/06/26/memsql-rage/
on “How MemSQL Distributes Data”Submitted Steve Jobs vs. Michael Jackson as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNice benchmark script. With EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS), I see that * normalized/join version needs to read 5600 pages * normalized/join version with an additional UNIQUE INDEX .. INCLUDE (type) needs to read 4500 pages * denormalized version only needs to read 66 pages, almost 100x fewer Related to this pagination use case, when using mysql, even the denormalized version may take minutes: https://dom.as/2015/07/30/o…
Comment linking /2015/07/30/on-order-by-optimization/
on “Squeeze the hell out of the system you have”Submitted MySQL is doomed? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Blowing up in memory (MySQL) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Metaverse runs on MySQL as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
