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Datomic's 'time travel' is an audit feature, not something for your application/business logic to depend on. Performance reasons make it impractical, unless you

by ithrow 3y ago

Datomic's 'time travel' is an audit feature, not something for your application/business logic to depend on. Performance reasons make it impractical, unless you only have like 10 users and very little data.

JulianWasTaken 3y ago
That's certainly not how it sells and markets itself. The first feature on benefits (and the only reason I've ever heard Datomic brought up and/or considered it myself for production workflows) is using that stuff in application workflows: https://docs.datomic.com/pro/time/filters.html#history https://docs.datomic.com/pro/time/filters.html#history Could be you're saying it in fact doesn't work well performance-wise, that'd (surprise me but) certainly explain why it's not more popular -- but I think it's clear it wants you to use this as an application feature.
- newlisp 3y ago
  Welcome to sales tactics ;) Datomic is great but as another commenter said, is good for "small-ish backoffice systems that never has to be web scale". You almost probably can rely on querying history for internal applications. I think their primary market was for companies to use it internally but they never made this clear.
  - KingMob 3y ago
    Ironically, Hickey fired the one marketer they hired for Datomic. He lucked out when a unicorn went all in on it. Word around Cognitect was, Datomic was barely breaking even.
  - xmlblog 3y ago
    > "small-ish backoffice systems that never has to be web scale". Doesn't production use of Datomic by Nubank and Netflix (to mention just two examples) belie this assertion?
    - bilkow 3y ago
      Do those companies specify what they use it for? They probably have their own internal "small-ish backoffice systems".
    - oblio 3y ago
      Nubank is one thing, but for Netflix, just like for any big company 10000 DB technologies are probably in use at the same time. And 9996 of them are used for stuff like the internal HR DB or other minor projects.
    - KingMob 3y ago
      Alternatively, Datomic wasn't performing up to snuff, and they found it cheaper to buy Cognitect than do a DB migration :D

by ithrow 3y ago

JulianWasTaken 3y ago

That's certainly not how it sells and markets itself. The first feature on benefits (and the only reason I've ever heard Datomic brought up and/or considered it myself for production workflows) is using that stuff in application workflows: https://docs.datomic.com/pro/time/filters.html#history https://docs.datomic.com/pro/time/filters.html#history Could be you're saying it in fact doesn't work well performance-wise, that'd (surprise me but) certainly explain why it's not more popular -- but I think it's clear it wants you to use this as an application feature.

newlisp 3y ago
Welcome to sales tactics ;) Datomic is great but as another commenter said, is good for "small-ish backoffice systems that never has to be web scale". You almost probably can rely on querying history for internal applications. I think their primary market was for companies to use it internally but they never made this clear.
- KingMob 3y ago
  Ironically, Hickey fired the one marketer they hired for Datomic. He lucked out when a unicorn went all in on it. Word around Cognitect was, Datomic was barely breaking even.
- xmlblog 3y ago
  > "small-ish backoffice systems that never has to be web scale". Doesn't production use of Datomic by Nubank and Netflix (to mention just two examples) belie this assertion?
  - bilkow 3y ago
    Do those companies specify what they use it for? They probably have their own internal "small-ish backoffice systems".
  - oblio 3y ago
    Nubank is one thing, but for Netflix, just like for any big company 10000 DB technologies are probably in use at the same time. And 9996 of them are used for stuff like the internal HR DB or other minor projects.
  - KingMob 3y ago
    Alternatively, Datomic wasn't performing up to snuff, and they found it cheaper to buy Cognitect than do a DB migration :D