Every time I've looked at rqlite, it just falls short features-wise in what I would want to do with it. A single raft group does not scale horizontally, so to me rqlite is a toy rather than a tool worth using (because someone might mistake the toy as production grade software).
otoolep|1 year ago
That's clearly a mistaken attitude because both Consul and etcd also use a single "Raft group" and they are production-grade software.
Ruling out a piece of software simply because it doesn't "scale horizontally" (and only writes don't scale horizontally in practice) is a naive attitude.
protosam|1 year ago
One of the problems is if you're working with developers, the log replication contents is the queries, instead of the sqlite WAL like in dqlite. I know this is a work around to integrate mattn/sqlite3, but it's untenable in enterprise applications where developers are going to just think "oh, I can do sqlite stuff!". This is a footgun that someone will inevitably trigger at some point if rqlite is in their infrastructure for anything substantial. In enterprise, it's plainly untenable.
Another issue is if I want to architect a system around rqlite, it wont be "consistent" with rqlite alone. The client must operate the transaction and get feedback from the system, which you can not do with an HTTP API the way you've implemented it. There was a post today where you can observe that with the jetcd library against etcd. Furthermore to this point, you can't even design a consistent system around rqlite alone because you can't use it as a locking service. If I want locks, I end up deploying etcd, consul, or zookeeper anyways.
If I had to choose a distributed database with schema support right now for a small scale operation, it would probably be yugabyte or cockroachdb. They're simply better at doing what rqlite is trying to do.
At the end of the day, the type of people needing to do data replication also need to distribute their data. They need a more robust design and better safety guarantees than rqlite can offer today. This is literally the reason one of my own projects has been in the prototyping stage for nearly 10 years now. If building a reliable database was as easy as integrating sqlite with a raft library, I would have shipped nearly 10 years ago. Unfortunately, I'm still testing non-conventional implementations to guarantee safety before I go sharing something that people are going to put their valuable data into.
To simply say I'm "ruling out a piece of software because it doesn't scale horizontally" is incorrect. The software lacks designs and features required for the audience you probably want to use it.
Hopefully you find my thoughts helpful in understanding where I'm coming from with the context I've shared.