---
title: "Amazon Quantum Ledger Database now available"
publication: "DB Weekly"
issue: 271
published_at: "2019-09-13"
canonical_url: "https://dbweekly.com/issues/271"
---

This week's database news       

#271 — September 13, 2019 

[Read on the Web](https://dbweekly.com/issues/271)   

Database Weekly  

[Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB) Now Available](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-available-amazon-quantum-ledger-database-qldb/) — Now in production form across five AWS regions, QLDB is a ‘ledger’ style database for tracking all committed changes to a dataset in a guaranteed and verifiably accurate way. 

Jeff Barr   

[Scylla Alternator: An Open Source DynamoDB-Compatible API for Scylla](https://www.scylladb.com/2019/09/11/scylla-alternator-the-open-source-dynamodb-compatible-api/) — Alternator is an open source project that brings DynamoDB compatibility to Scylla, a Cassandra-inspired distributed NoSQL store. The ScyllaDB company themselves have also [just raised $25m](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/09/11/1914087/0/en/ScyllaDB-Secures-25-Million-to-Open-Source-Amazon-DynamoDB-compatible-API.html). 

ScyllaDB   [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/206909c0.jpg)](https://neo4j.com/graph-algorithms-book/?utm_source=db-weekly&utm_medium=nsltrpl&utm_campaign=dl) 

[Free O’Reilly Book: Graph Algorithms](https://neo4j.com/graph-algorithms-book/?utm_source=db-weekly&utm_medium=nsltrpl&utm_campaign=dl) — Building predictive models or forecasting real-world behavior? Download this free O'Reilly book on using graph algorithms in Apache Spark and Neo4j with 20+ practical examples. 

Neo4j sponsor   

[Procella: Unifying Serving and Analytical Data at YouTube](https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/09/11/procella/) — Adrian Colyer’s analysis of compsci papers is always good to read, but in this case he’s going big with the claim that _“what we’re looking at here could well be the future of data processing”_ and Google’s already using Procella in production. 

the morning paper   

[SQL Concepts: From A to Z](http://www.helenanderson.co.nz/sql-concepts-from-a-to-z/) — A brief revisiting of twenty-six, unsurprisingly, database concepts spanning the alphabet. 

Helen Anderson   

[A Technical Introduction to MemSQL](https://www.memsql.com/blog/a-technical-introduction-to-memsql/) — A brief technical introduction to the MemSQL database, a distributed, in-memory, SQL DBMS. 

John Sherwood (MemSQL)   

[Netlify Unveils a FaunaDB Add-on for Its Hosting Platform](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/09/10/announcing-the-faunadb-add-on-for-netlify/) — Netlify, very much an up and coming modern site hosting platform, has rolled out a [FaunaDB](https://fauna.com/) add-on to let its users seamlessly plug a globally distributed database into their site. 

Netlify  

💻 Jobs  

[Lead Security Engineer](https://grnh.se/59299dec1) — Make an impact as our first Security Engineer, focusing on driving innovation & best practices around our cloud security efforts. 

Cockroach Labs   

[Find a DB job through Vettery](https://www.vettery.com/tech?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=cooper-dbweekly&utm_term=tech&utm_content=grouped&utm_campaign=ad-88878) — Make a free profile, name your salary, and connect with hiring managers from top employers. 

Vettery  

📒 Articles & Tutorials  

[Using `DISTINCT ON` in Non-PostgreSQL Databases](https://blog.jooq.org/2019/09/09/using-distinct-on-in-non-postgresql-databases/) — `DISTINCT ON` is a neat feature in Postgres’s SQL dialect for selecting the first rows that distinctly match a variety of conditions. (We even wrote about it in [issue 321 of our Postgres newsletter](https://postgresweekly.com/issues/321?utm_source=db&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cross_promo&utm_content=271)). 

Lukas Eder   

[eBook: Best Practices for Optimizing Postgres Query Performance](https://pganalyze.com/ebooks/optimizing-postgres-query-performance?utm_source=DBWeeklySecondary) — Learn how to get a 3x performance improvement on your Postgres database and 500x reduced data loaded from disk in this free pganalyze eBook. 

pganalyze sponsor   

[Using MySQL as a Cache Layer for BigQuery with Cube.js](https://cube.dev/blog/when-mysql-is-faster-than-bigquery/) — An interesting idea around using BigQuery as a slow ‘single source of truth’ but with MySQL as a ‘caching layer’ for sub-second responses for certain queries from a Cube.js dashboard. 

Artyom Keydunov   

[What is an SQL 'Relation'?](https://theartofpostgresql.com/blog/2019-09-sql-relations/) — A short but sweet introduction to the concept of what a ‘relation’ is. It’s not just the persistent tables you’re familiar with but _“the truth is that any SQL query defines a new relation.”_ Dmitri has also released some related articles this week reintroducing us to [joins](https://theartofpostgresql.com/blog/2019-09-sql-joins/) and [aggregates.](https://theartofpostgresql.com/blog/2019-09-sql-aggregates/) 

Dimitri Fontaine   

[Hot Patching SQL Server Engine in Azure SQL Database](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-SQL-Database/Hot-Patching-SQL-Server-Engine-in-Azure-SQL-Database/ba-p/849700) — A (very) technical, but interesting(!), explanation of how the Azure team manage to _hot patch_ live, running versions of the SQL Server engine used by Azure SQL Database to keep things up to date without affecting customers. Enjoy this as a geeky story and not because there are any solid takeaways. 

Hans Olav Norheim (Microsoft)  

🛠 Tools & Code  

[Waltz: A Distributed Write-Ahead Log](https://wecode.wepay.com/posts/waltz-a-distributed-write-ahead-log) — Initially designed to be a ledger of transactions for the WePay system but now generalized for broader use cases of distributed systems that require serializable consistency. 

wepay   

[nanoSQL 2: A Universal 'Database Layer' for Client, Server and Mobile](https://nanosql.io/) — Basically an abstraction for any JavaScript developers who want a database in their app. It can use numerous actual databases behind the scenes, including localStorage, IndexedDB, RocksDB, Redis, DynamoDB, ScyllaDB and SQLite. It claims to be like “Lego™ for databases”. 

Scott Lott   

[Poli: An Easy-to-Use SQL Reporting App Built for SQL Lovers](https://github.com/shzlw/poli) — Java-based and can connect to any database supported via JDBC. 

Zhonglu         

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