Re: postgresql versus riak for a global exchange

A very popular design I see is often this:

- PostgreSQL for account, inventory, transactional; and all writes
- NoSQL (Redis, Riak, Mongo, etc) for read-only index postgres (almost like a read-through cache) and assembled documents

On Jan 5, 2015, at 5:46 PM, Raymond Cote wrote:

> I’m familiar with both PostgreSQL and Riak (1.4, not 2.0).
> I know that Riak 2.0 now offers strong consistency. Have not yet seen what that does to performance.
> Big plusses for PostgreSQL:
> - you can do both relational and NOSQL tasks (the Binary JSON in the latest PostgreSQL).
> - well-tested consistency, ACID, etc.
> - lots of adapters and support.
> - big community
>
> Big plusses for Riak:
> - multi-master replication
> - multi-data center replication
> - easy to scale up
>
> We use PostgreSQL in combination with Riak for data storage (we have a tokenization service).
> We're currently using the EnterpriseDB multi-master PostgreSQL replication and are quite happy with it.
> The replication runs periodically, not streaming, so there is at least a 1 second delay for replication to occur.
> Riak replicates quicker — but then you don’t have the strong relational structure on top.
>
> As mentioned earlier, ‘exchange…trade…asset’ is a bit vague.
> In addition to just storing things, you’ll need to keep track of all sorts of log-in and contact info — perhaps not ideal for Riak.
> Probably best to consider precisely what traits your planned application has and then look to match against the database storage.
> May even end up with a mix of the two just as we have.
>
> Your decision may also depend on which development language/framework you chose for the implementation.