Kyle Kingsbury/Aphyr's Jepsen distributed DB testing writeups are also a really, really wonderful base for comprehending some of the failings of distributed systems.
Those write ups are bar none the best writeups I've seen that focus on the distributed databases. If I had to list the things you can learn from them:
- Efficient (and intelligent) testing of distributed systems (check out his clojure libraries that he uses)
- Effective clojure
- Introduction (and re-introduction, which is IMO one of the best ways to learn) of distributed system guarantees (linearizability, serializability, and lesser guarantees), in the context of database system guarantees
- how to write good information dense blog posts
- how to deftly (and openly) navigate the ethics of paid testing of a product by a corporate entity
- how to critically think about distributed database hype trains
i also like them, especially how well he documents his findings and their implications.
Before anyone dismisses one of his tested databases, I'd however like caution against trusting his work fully at this point. Some of the documents are 5+ years old, thats a lot of time for the database developers to resolve issues.
thankfully, the tests are all replicable, so if you're evaluating cassandra for example, please repeat his tests before dismissing the database.
https://aphyr.com/tags/Jepsen https://jepsen.io/analyses