Top all-time · #544
TiDB
Company blog · pingcap.com/blogdataprogramming
TiDB is the company blog at pingcap.com, writing about data and programming. Since 2015, 106 different Hacker News readers have linked it 500 times, most often “How We Doubled System Read Throughput with Only 26 Lines of Code”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers mostly link PingCAP's blog for its Rust compile-time series, cited as background on why Rust builds are slow. Many other links are TiDB product plugs or case studies.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
TiDB is the distributed SQL database built for AI agents. Vectors, transactions, and analytics in one engine with ACID guarantees and elastic scale.
Most-linked posts?
- How We Doubled System Read Throughput with Only 26 Lines of Code7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-02-06
- Columnstore and Rowstore = Real HTAP6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-11-04
- Early Impressions of Go from a Rust Programmer6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-02-26
- TiDB in the Browser: Running a Golang Database on WebAssembly5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-11-06
- Quickly Find Rust Program Bottlenecks Online Using a Go Tool5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-03-25
- Never Worry About Slow Queries Again: Manage Your SQL Plan5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-05-06
- /blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity4 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-07-03
- What to Consider When Choosing a Database: Experience with MySQL, TiDB and Redis4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-03-11
- /blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity/4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-01-13
- We Compiled a Golang Database in the Browser Using WebAssembly4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-11-16
What Hacker News says?
My source: https://pingcap.com/blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity#boo... > 7 femto-bunnies - rustboot building Rust prior to being retired > 49 kilo-hamsters - rustc building Rust immediately after rustboot's retirement > 188 giga-sloths - rustc building Rust in 2020
Comment linking /blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity
on “Zig self hosted compiler is now capable of building itself”Submitted Generics and Compile-Time in Rust as a story · 268 points
HN discussionSorry, yes: https://pingcap.com/blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22197082
Comment linking /blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity
on “Why I rewrote my Rust keyboard firmware in Zig: consistency, mastery, and fun”Submitted The Rust Compilation Model Calamity as a story · 236 points
HN discussionFirst let me say: I like Rust. I'm a fan. But... it did make some early decisions that are going to be hard to shake off, most notably around build times. This [1] is well worth a read. [1]: https://pingcap.com/blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity
Comment linking /blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity
on “Dave Herman’s contributions to Rust”Submitted A Few More Reasons Rust Compiles Slowly as a story · 180 points
HN discussionI find it wild how much they have downplayed this in their statement. https://www.pingcap.com/trust-hub/security/security-update-o... ”An external incident response firm reviewed PingCAP’s production systems and found no evidence that the attacker ran commands or maintained persistent access in the systems reviewed” hmm, I don't think that's true.
Comment linking /trust-hub/security/security-update-october-2026/
on “Security Disclosure”Submitted Lessons from Bug Hunters Who've Found 400 Bugs in Popular DBMSs as a story · 151 points
HN discussionShameless plug: You might be interested in TiDB ( https://github.com/pingcap/tidb ), an open-source distributed HTAP database. - For OLTP workload and some ad-hoc queries, you can use TiDB + TiKV. One of our adopters has a production cluster with 300+ TB data and can easily cope with the spike caused by the brought by COVID-19. - For more complex queries, TiSpark+ TiKV might work well; for heavier queries, we added…
Comment linking /blog/delivering-real-time-analytics-and-true-htap-by-combining-columnstore-and-rowstore/
on “PostgreSQL is the worlds’ best database”Submitted Squashed Bugs, with Failure Rate Heatmaps as a story · 115 points
HN discussionPart of what makes rustc's slow compile times so frustrating is that the slow compile times are mostly unrelated to all of the fancy compile-time analysis you listed. You can see this in action if you run `cargo check`. That will run all the special static analysis (typeck, borrowck, dropck, etc.) and complete in a very reasonable amount of time. To a first approximation, rustc is slow because it generates terrible…
Comment linking /blog/tag/Rust
on “Linux kernel in-tree Rust support”Submitted Lesson Learned from Queries over 1.3T Rows of Data as a story · 111 points
HN discussionA note from the CEO: https://www.pingcap.com/trust-hub/security/ceo-note-october-...
Comment linking /trust-hub/security/ceo-note-october-2026/
on “PingCap TiDB Leaks”Submitted Vectorized execution brings a 10x performance increase for expression evaluation as a story · 95 points
HN discussionhttps://www.pingcap.com/trust-hub/security/security-update-o... I find it really baffling how much they are downplaying this incident on their statement. ”An external incident response firm reviewed PingCAP’s production systems and found no evidence that the attacker ran commands or maintained persistent access in the systems reviewed” That does not appear to be true.
Comment linking /trust-hub/security/security-update-october-2026/
on “PingCap TiDB Leaks”Submitted How to Efficiently Choose the Right Database for Your Applications as a story · 80 points
HN discussionComing this close on the heels of the security audit by NCC [1] is pretty embarassing for all parties. [1] https://www.pingcap.com/press-release/tidb-ncc-group-securit...
Comment linking /press-release/tidb-ncc-group-security-assessment/
on “PingCap TiDB Leaks”Submitted TiDB 4.0 GA Release as a story · 76 points
HN discussionThis is somewhat similar to TiAdvisor for TiDB, which also uses a hypothetical method. https://www.pingcap.com/blog/introducing-tiadvisor-automated...
Comment linking /blog/introducing-tiadvisor-automated-tidb-index-discovery/
on “Show HN: PostgreSQL index advisor”Submitted Key Visualizer: Observe distributed databases to discover the unknowns as a story · 71 points
HN discussionCompiling really is the Achilles heel of Rust I feel. This article really talks about the worst case. As others have noted, Haskell and other languages have this property too. Here’s another perspective on practical issues [1] that’s worth reading. Basically, Rust made some understandable but unfortunate design decisions that are hard to walk back or change now. [1]: https://pingcap.com/blog/rust-compilation-model-c…
Comment linking /blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity
on “Compiling Rust is NP-hard”Submitted TiDB Cloud, Managed as a Service and in the Marketplace as a story · 64 points
HN discussionTiDB has already supported this (similar) feature about 2 years ago and it has been adopted by the gaming users: https://www.pingcap.com/blog/2016-11-15-Travelling-Back-in-T...
Comment linking /blog/2016-11-15-Travelling-Back-in-Time-and-Reclaiming-the-Lost-Treasures/
on “Amazon Aurora Backtrack”Submitted We Chose a Distributed SQL Database to Complement MySQL as a story · 63 points
HN discussionWe use it as an insert only db for now for incoming webhooks which allows us to de-duplicate events and significantly reduce writes to the main PG db. We're running it on GKE which has been much easier to setup than PG. There is also TiDB which is similar in some ways to CRDB: https://pingcap.com/en/
Comment linking /en/
on “Pick strong consistency whenever possible”Submitted Rust's Huge Compilation Units as a story · 60 points
HN discussionAs a distributed database system, the highly-layered architecture of TiDB is not a disadvantage because it makes TiDB easier to debug and diagnose when issues occur. The complicity resulted from the separated modules can be easily tackled by automatic deployment tools and microservice framework. For example, TiDB can be easily deployed either using Ansible: https://pingcap.com/docs/op-guide/ansible-deployment/ or Do…
Comment linking /docs/op-guide/docker-compose/
on “CockroachDB 2.0 Performance Makes Significant Strides”Submitted TiDB 2.1 GA: Battle-Tested to Handle an Unpredictable World as a story · 58 points
HN discussionThere are some other options as well, like this one: https://www.pingcap.com/tidb-serverless/
Comment linking /tidb-serverless/
on “Neon Serverless Postgres is generally available”Submitted TiDB 2.0 Is Ready – Faster, Smarter, and Battle-Tested as a story · 58 points
HN discussion
