databasefail

Databases are the worst. Here is a repository of public posts by companies when a database (or a few) caused that company staff some long term trauma

May this list serve as a lesson as you use these tools of pain

1. Github tells us why cross region failover is not that simple
2. GIthub again reminds us that scaling databases is hard
3. Linear teaches us why foreign keys are a considered harmful
4. Vaccuum your transaction logs!
5. “Always have plenty of access guard rails for your production databases. And make it very hard to delete data”, GitLab…..Also, replication is not deletion protection 🫠
6. RPOs and RTOs are fantasies. Unless you practice them
7. There are databases everywhere. Even ones you can’t control that can still cause you pain
8. The worst kind of database outage is data loss/corruption. Way worse than downtime
9. If you are a nascant database vendor, job #1 is to not lose data
10. Fault domains mean nothing if it all comes down to one database, as Heroku learned recently
11. Foreign keys….strike again!
12. Oh my…sometimes the nightmare keeps going
13. Even ‘INSTANT’ schema changes can go sideways

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Maintained by Silvia Botros. PRs welcome