Questions and Answers

What is Record-Store?

Record-Store is a layer running on top of FoundationDB that provide a new kind of abstractions for storing data. We like to think that we are offering something between an SQL table and a MongoDB collections.

Why?

Please see the motivation page.

What can I do with it?

You can use the Record-Store to create as many data holders(called RecordSpace) as you need.

We would like to have this kind of flow for developers:

1. Opening RecordSpace, for example prod/users
2. Create a protobuf definition which will be used as schema
3. Upsert schema
4. Push records
5. Query records
6. delete records

You need another KeySpace to store another type of data, or maybe a KeySpace dedicated for a production environment? Juste create it and you are good to go!

How complicated queries can be?

Please see the query capabilities page.

What is the terminology used within Record-Store?

• tenant is your account
• RecordSpace is like a virtual SQL table, it is a logical place where you have schemas and data. If you know your way around distributed key-value store, it can be also view as a keySpace, except that you are manipulating records instead of keys.
• RecordType is the name of the message structure defined in protobuf
• Record is an instance of a protobuf message

Is it production-ready?

It is experimental.

What is working for now?

Working:

• multi-tenancy
• encryption
• access with crypto-tokens
• gRPC endpoint
• schema upload/upgrade
• push data
• retrieve data
• GraphQL proof-of-concept (converting a Protobuf schema to GraphQL and allowed queries based on the indexes)

Work in progress:

• working GraphQL
• Java/Go/Rust/(your language) clients

Can I test it?

This will be tricky as we have (yet) no usable clients but we are focusing on those. If you want to contribute, please see the dedicated page.

Why gRPC?

Because the Record-Layer is already massively using Protobuf.

Why GraphQL?

We think that offering an GraphQL interface will allow web developers to use the Record-Store.

Can I disable encryption?

No.

Why FoundationDB?

• We are heavily relying on FDB’s Record-Layer
• we need transactions capabilities to make indexes possible
• we need a distributed database to scale the RecordSpaces
• FoundationDB’s testing is more rigorous than Jepsen