---
title: "Intelligence, SIMD, and graphs: the future of databases?"
publication: "DB Weekly"
issue: 299
published_at: "2020-04-10"
canonical_url: "https://dbweekly.com/issues/299"
---

Plus more database news, views, and links.       

#299 — April 10, 2020 

[Read on the Web](https://dbweekly.com/issues/299)   

Hi folks, we're taking things a little easier this week as we're celebrating Easter Friday here in the UK. If you celebrate Easter, we hope you're having a good one 🙂 
_— Peter & the Cooperpress team_  

Database Weekly 

[![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/v9hrwmlwlvphz0lhdeyh.jpg)](https://pingcap.com/blog/future-of-database-unified-infrastructure-to-adapt-intelligently/)   

[TiDB 4.0: A Peek into the Future of Databases?](https://pingcap.com/blog/future-of-database-unified-infrastructure-to-adapt-intelligently/) — Everyone who’s building a database system thinks their approach is the future and PingCAP are no different proclaiming their TiDB 4.0 release candidate as _“the prototype of what the future database looks like.”_ The core idea is that databases will continue to get more ‘intelligent’ in scaling, scheduling and adapting to unpredictable workloads. 

Ed Huang (PingCAP)   

[QuestDB: Using SIMD to Aggregate Billions of Rows Per Second](https://www.questdb.io/blog/2020/04/02/using-simd-to-aggregate-billions-of-rows-per-second) — QuestDB is a performance-focused, open-source time-series database that uses SQL. It uses SIMD instructions, vectorizations and parallel execution to achieve pretty compelling performance figures. [GitHub repo.](https://github.com/questdb/questdb/) 

Tancrede Collard   [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/52cc1d05.png)](https://www.datadoghq.com/dg/monitor/databases-benefits-ts/?utm_source=Advertisement&utm_medium=CooperPress&utm_campaign=CooperPress-DatabaseWeeklyP) 

[Collect and Visualize Database Performance Metrics in Real Time](https://www.datadoghq.com/dg/monitor/databases-benefits-ts/?utm_source=Advertisement&utm_medium=CooperPress&utm_campaign=CooperPress-DatabaseWeeklyP) — Easily identify slow-running queries, bottlenecks, and other database errors using granular analytics provided in Datadog. Correlate logs with related traces and metrics for fast troubleshooting. Try Datadog free today. 

Datadog sponsor   

[The Ten Rules for Data Modeling with DynamoDB](https://www.trek10.com/blog/the-ten-rules-for-data-modeling-with-dynamodb) — Amazon’s DynamoDB is one of the most fastest-growing databases right now, given how well it fits in with other AWS services (especially AWS Lambda). This post looks at how to use it properly. 

Alex DeBrie   

[RedisGraph 2.0: Graph Technology on Top of Redis](https://www.redislabs.com/blog/introducing-redisgraph-2-0/) — A Redis module that adds graph database functionality to the popular data structure server. The version adds increased Cypher support, full-text search, and graph visualization. 

Pieter Cailliau and Alex Milowski   

[10 Things I Hate About PostgreSQL](https://medium.com/@rbranson/10-things-i-hate-about-postgresql-20dbab8c2791) — Just a few weeks ago people said that [‘Postgres is the world’s best database’](https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/blog/postgresql-is-the-worlds-best-database/) but here Rick reminds us that no software is _perfect_ and that even Postgres has flaws 🤭 

Rick Branson   

[Dataviz and the 20th Anniversary of R, an Interview With Hadley Wickham](https://t.co/vK4RKplRJe?amp=1) — Catching up with the prominent R community member and creator of ggplot and tidyr about community, Tidyverse, and what’s in store for R over the next 20 years. 

Will Chase   

[How to Boost Productivity of Your Data Teams with Documentation](https://app.livestorm.co/dataedo/how-to-boost-productivity-of-your-data-teams-with-documentation?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dbweekly) — Current situation forced many data teams to start working remotely. Learn how to make it easier with documentation. 

Dataedo webinarsponsor   

[The Many Flavors of the Arcane SQL `MERGE` Statement](https://blog.jooq.org/2020/04/10/the-many-flavours-of-the-arcane-sql-merge-statement/) — Lukas really sells this one: _“The SQL MERGE statement is a device whose mystery is only exceeded by its power.”_ Many SQL systems support `MERGE` at varying levels though, notably, _not_ Postgres or MySQL. 

Lukas Eder   

[Comparing MongoDB vs PostgreSQL over _JOIN_s](https://www.enterprisedb.com/blog/comparison-joins-mongodb-vs-postgresql) — An analysis of structuring data in both MongoDB’s NoSQL world and Postgres’s relational world to model a classical employee-department data model. It’s a little apples and oranges but makes some reasonable points and when something has a Turing Award winner’s name on it, it’s a must read. 

Michael Stonebraker and Álvaro Hernández   

[Why You (Probably) Don't Need PostGIS](https://blog.rebased.pl/2020/04/07/why-you-probably-dont-need-postgis.html) — PostGIS is a popular and _very_ powerful set of geospatial extensions for PostgreSQL but for many geospatial tasks it’s a bit like using _“a very large cannon to shoot a tiny bird”_ and there are simpler alternatives. 

Krzysztof Zych         

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