HN treats it as the canonical talk on simulation testing and a mind-blowing example of how far rigorous testing can go.
Topics › Systems, Networks & Security
The best databases & storage videos, according to Hacker News
69 videos about databases & storage that Hacker News commenters keep pointing each other to, ranked by how many separate months they were recommended. Part of Systems, Networks & Security.
HN commenters cite it as the talk that convinced them of immutability and functional programming.
The go-to recommendation for learning DynamoDB data modeling, with many saying it made access-pattern-driven design click.
Commenters repeatedly cite it as the talk that reframed how they think about caching, derived data and event sourcing.
Treated as the go-to approachable yet deep primer on CRDTs and collaborative editing, recommended repeatedly in threads on Automerge, local-first software and OT versus CRDT.
Frequently recommended as the best free university course on database internals, praised for depth and Pavlo's presentation.
HN repeatedly recommends it as a balanced, beginner-friendly overview of SQL versus NoSQL, and some teachers assign it to students.
Cited as the classic rant on maps versus objects in discussions of data modeling and OOP.
HN commenters, including TigerBeetle people, recommend it as the explanation of a methodology for building defect-free, high-assurance software.
HN recommends Cantrill talks generally for their mix of industry history, technical depth and entertaining delivery, and this one is a favorite for storage and data integrity threads.
HN points to it as a thoughtful, first-principles take from a Turing award winner that cuts through NoSQL and big data hype.
Recommended as a fantastic introduction to declarative and Datalog-based distributed systems and failure modeling.
A perennial HN favorite whenever firmware, disks, ECC or opaque hardware come up, valued as both entertaining and sobering.
HN recommends it as the definitive explanation of ZFS design straight from its inventors, with war stories about data integrity.
HN commenters point to it as a first-hand overview of Heap's Postgres/Citus architecture and its distinctive indexing approach.
Recommended as a detailed, candid case study of scaling a real system from zero users to millions.
HN developers recommend it as the talk that changed how they model systems, and as a clear intro to event sourcing's motivations.
HN commenters call it a model demo video and the quickest way to see how much one developer packed into a self-hosted file server.
HN points people to it as the clearest account of why Datomic is designed the way it is and of the problems with conventional database architecture.
HN readers recommend it as a thorough, practical introduction to Postgres fundamentals and optimization for application developers.
Cited in many threads about academic incentives, paper counts and why academia struggles to produce working software.
HN recommends it as the definitive talk from the implementer on DuckDB's motivation and design.
HN recommends it as an instructive, easy-to-follow look at Lucene internals from a core committer.
Recommended in cache-algorithm threads as a fun, informative walk through caching strategies and ARC.
HN points to it as a lost example of intuitive low-code tooling, and as inspiration for newer products.
HN commenters recommend it as the main resource on Swift as an incremental successor to C++ and on how the interoperability works in practice.
Recommended for the SQLite author's reasoned case for a different approach to version control, and as an introduction to Fossil.
HN commenters recommend it to developers unfamiliar with how much leverage and intelligence there is in a SQL database.
HN recommends it as a sampling of truly different programming paradigms beyond mainstream OOP.
HN recommends it as the best short introduction to what makes Prolog unique.
Recommended as a compact preview of Kleppmann's data systems material, including from his book on the subject.
Used as a reference for an ahead-of-its-time end-user database tool, brought up in threads on Access clones, Smalltalk and data-entry tools.
HN recommends it as the definitive explanation of XFS metadata performance fixes and how XFS was developed and made robust on Linux.
Cited as a demonstration of the Pathom/graph approach to connecting APIs, as an alternative to GraphQL.
Shared in outage and accidental-deletion threads as a relatable, well-told horror story.
HN recommends it as a rich, concrete look at real-world system design and as evidence of YouTube's early Python stack.
HN points to it as a solid, if long, introduction to B-epsilon trees and why BetrFS is built the way it is.
Recommended whenever ZFS encryption comes up as the authoritative explanation of how it was added and its trade-offs at scale.
HN recommends it as an approachable talk on a total functional generalization of Datalog, by the language's author.
HN points to it as a detailed, captivating talk by the Noria author, including a good explanation of deduplicating data between maps using unsafe.
Pointed to as the clearest explanation of what Foundry actually is, and for its polished software, though one commenter calls it dated now.
Recommended as the best introduction to modern SQL standard features that textbooks skip.
HN points to it as the video explanation of how RAID-Z expansion works without block pointer rewrite.
HN points to it as an authoritative look at DynamoDB internals and as evidence it is a complex distributed system.
Cited in sync-engine threads as the origin story for Zero and for hybrid local and remote queries.
Pointed to as the authoritative history of FFS from one of its original creators.
Recommended as Rick Houlihan's definitive talk on modeling relational-style data in DynamoDB.
HN cites it as Nubank's account of building a bank on Datomic and Clojure, and for what Datomic's temporal model enables.
HN commenters list it among the best introductions to event sourcing and use it to illustrate storing read-only events instead of mutating state.
HN points to it, including Gjengset himself, as a more digestible way into partially-stateful dataflow than the thesis text, mostly in caching and database threads.
Cited as the memorable case for moving to SSDs and as an example of how swearing can make a talk stick.
HN commenters cite it in event sourcing threads for Young's views on when to use it, including advice against cross-application event sourcing.
Cited in sync-engine and local-first threads for Kleppmann's argument for a generic, standardised sync protocol or service.
Pointed to as practical talk on off-heap memory and database programming in Lisp by experienced engineers.
Cited as a useful taxonomy for pinning down what an event-driven design actually is.
Recommended as a talk from SQLite's main author, and cited for the project's focus on backwards compatibility and for deployment anecdotes.
HN points to it as the detailed explanation of why hexagons suit map grids, in threads about H3.
Cited in backup and data-loss threads as a rare inside look at Google's backup practices, including its use of tape.
HN refers to it as an honest, candid account of the common story of losing precious data to storage failure.
Recommended as a first-hand intro from SQLite's creator that also teaches how a database engine is built.
Shared as a funny, accurate retelling of a classic outage, especially on a bad ops day.
HN posts it in Kafka-as-database debates and as an introduction to event logs and CQRS.
Cited in ZFS and filesystem threads as the go-to source on ZFS limits and tuning for NVMe.
HN cites it as the example of physically trucking data when network transfer is impractical.
Cited as the authoritative explanation of why block pointer rewrite is so hard to implement in ZFS.
Mostly cited as evidence of the friction between kernel maintainers and Rust developers, notably in Wedson Almeida Filho's resignation.
Cited as the origin of the compilers-as-databases idea in discussions of IDEs and incremental tooling.
Posted as a classic meme whenever MongoDB, NoSQL hype or tech fads come up.
Cited as a source for Ellison's comments about Amazon and Oracle, usually in threads about Amazon migrating off Oracle, and often critically.
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