This document discusses polyglot persistence, which is using multiple specialized databases rather than a single general-purpose database. It provides examples of VidaXL's use of polyglot persistence, including MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SOLR, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Couchbase, and Prometheus. The benefits discussed are using the right database for each job and gaining flexibility as the company transitioned to microservices. Challenges included increased complexity, and solutions involved automation, tooling, and hiring database experts.

1. Art van Scheppingen - Senior (No)SQL DBA @ VidaXL
Bart Oleś - Senior Support Engineer @ Severalnines
Polyglot persistence: utilizing
open source databases as a
Swiss pocket knife

2. Who are we?

3. VidaXL Company Stats
• Online retailer in (mostly) slow moving goods
• Founded 2008
• 350M turnover, 40% growth yearly
• 1500 employees (US, CN, AU, IN, RO, UA)
• HQ in the Netherlands
• 4 warehouses worldwide (NL, US and AU)

4. How does VidaXL sell its goods?
• Own webshop platform in EU, US and AU
• Warehouses in NL, US and AU
• Selling on other platforms, e.g. Amazon, eBay
• Allow selling on our own platform using Mirakl
• B2B drop-shipments

5. VidaXL Technical Foundations
• SAP as ERP system
• Genesys as CS system
• Webshop
• Open source web-based development strategy
• PHP / NodeJS
• Docker
• Cloudflare workers

6. VidaXL DevOps Datastores
• MySQL
• MariaDB (Galera) clusters
• MySQL replication
• PostgreSQL
• SOLR
• Elasticsearch
• ELK
• MongoDB
• Couchbase
• (RabbitMQ)
• Prometheus

7. What is Polyglot Persistence?
Using multiple specialized persistent stores rather than one single general-purpose database

8. Where does the term come from?
• The way we work is changing
• Enterprise applications are becoming more complex
• Separate (devops/agile) teams
• Ownership of applications
• (Micro)services
• Everyone has their preference
• Various programming languages
• Various storage systems

9. Where does the term come from?
• Monoglot Programming
• Only one programming language allowed
• Readability
• All code is in the same language
• Support
• One platform to support
• Knowledge
• Everybody is an expert
• Is there a jack-of-all-trades language?

10. Where does the term come from?
• Monoglot Programming
• Only one programming language allowed
• Readability
• All code is in the same language
• Support
• One platform to support
• Knowledge
• Everybody is an expert
• Is there a jack-of-all-trades language?

11. Monoglot
programming
•

12. Monoglot programming
Carpenters actually use a broad variety of tools

13. Polyglot Programming
• Polyglot Programming
• Use programming languages for what they are good at
• Flexibility
• Use Java for a secure API
• Use Scala for real time stream processing
• Use Python for text analysis
• Tie everything together using AngularJS
• Knowledge
• Everybody is expert at one or more languages

14. Polyglot Programming

15. Monoglot Persistence

16. Data storage landscape changes
• Relational data stores (RDBMS)
• Key-Value data stores (“NoSQL”)
• Columnar data stores (OLAP)
• Document data stores (NoSQL)
• Graph data stores (GDB)
• Big Data

17. Data storage landscape changes
Software
RDBMS Oracle, MySQL,
PostgreSQL
Key-Value Redis, Riak
Columnar InfiniDB, Clickhouse
Document MongoDB,
Couchbase
Graph Neo4J, Janusgraph
Big Data Hadoop

18. Data storage landscape changes
Software AWS Google
RDBMS Oracle, MySQL,
PostgreSQL
RDS, Aurora CloudSQL, Spanner
Key-Value Redis, Riak DynamoDB Datastore
Columnar InfiniDB, Clickhouse Redshift BigQuery
Document MongoDB,
Couchbase
SimpleDB Bigtable
Graph Neo4J, Janusgraph Neptune
Big Data Hadoop EMR Cloud Dataproc

19. Even Hadoop has become a polyglot

20. Polyglot Persistence
• Complex problems require different storage systems
• Use the right tool for the job, for example
• Use PostgreSQL for financial data
• Use MySQL for website contents
• Use MongoDB for user profiles
• Use Cassandra for real time streams
• Use Neo4J for recommendation analysis

21. Use the right tool for the right job
Document storage: MongoDB

22. Use the right tool for the right job
Columnar storage: Cassandra

23. Use the right tool for the right job
Graph storage: Neo4J

24. Polyglot Persistence

25. Polyglot Persistence at VidaXL
Yes we certainly are polyglots!

26. Quick recap on our data stores
• MySQL
• MariaDB (Galera) clusters
• MySQL replication
• ProxySQL
• PostgreSQL
• SOLR
• Elasticsearch
• ELK
• MongoDB
• Couchbase
• (RabbitMQ)
• Prometheus

27. How did this happen?
• Continuous growth
• Hardly any time to overhaul existing systems
• Transition from monolith to microservice architecture
• For each microservice the most optimal solution has been chosen
• Early adopters of new technology
• Gaining advantage over competition

28. From monolith to microservice

29. From monolith to microservice

30. From monolith to microservice

31. From monolith to microservice

32. From monolith to microservice

33. From monolith to microservice

34. What were the challenges?
• Automation
• Increased complexity
• Systems monitoring
• Multiple integrations
• Maintenance becomes more difficult
• Backups
• Scaling
• Software updates
• DevOps are not a DBA

35. What were the solutions?
• Invest in automation
• Never perform any (large) task thrice
• Increase tooling
• Build it ourselves costs time
• Buying/licensing tools costs money
• Keeping the headcount low saves money
• Focus on systems that matter most
• Get (exteneral) help
• Hire DBAs! ;)

36. ClusterControl by Severalnines
<some subtitle here?>

37. Thank you