Deal for $ 39 million: why the creators of the open source DBMS decided to engage in mobile development
In late April, MongoDB announced the purchase of Realm, a cross-platform mobile database. In today's article - about how companies have approached the transaction and what they plan.
/ Pxhere / pd
Realm (formerly tight.db) is a Danish startup founded in 2011. He is developing an open source database that provides object storage for mobile application information. The solution is multiplatform and is designed for Android and iOS. Realm has good documentation and there are examples on GitHub .
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During its work, the startup has attracted more than $ 40 million in investments from venture capital firms Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures and Greylock Partners. Today, Realm is used in mobile applications by companies like Google, Starbucks, Netflix, McDonald's and eBay.
The prerequisite for the Realm and MongoDB deal was the desire of the latter to expand its influence in the field of mobile development. Last fall, the company introduced its MongoDB Mobile database. However, the product has not gained great popularity. In an interview with Eliot Horowitz, a major CTO news aggregator from Eliot Horowitz, many customers still chose the Realm product during mobile development.
Performance decisions. One of the key features of Realm is zero copy - the database supports operations during which the processor does not copy data from one memory area to another. Another important component is MVCC . This is a mechanism that provides parallel access to data. All users operate with their own personal database images (which are then synchronized), without blocking work with write / read transactions.
According to some estimates , the processing speed of requests in Realm differs from analogs (SQLite, greenDAO, OrmLite) by eight times. In this case, the Realm database works with so-called live objects — if the data in the database is updated, then all objects in the code that refer to them are updated.
These features will allow MongoDB to offer its customers more productive solutions for developing high-load applications. For example, new opportunities will open for IaaS-providers using the company's products.
Integration. Realm has an API set that gives developers the ability to build the business logic of an application in any programming language. Plus, the Realm mobile database supports iOS, Android, JavaScript web applications, and Xamarin.
MongoDB is also a cross-platform document-oriented NoSQL database. It is therefore not surprising that the company plans to integrate the functionality of Realm with some of its commercial products. New features will soon appear in the MongoDB Atlas cloud database and Stitch serverless computing platform that automates the generation of mobile push notifications.
Community development. By combining efforts in the development of a mobile database, companies hope to provide solutions that will eventually become a kind of standard for the new generation of connected services.
By the way, the developers, who plan to use Realm in the production environment, are counting on the latter. Today, the mobile database is experiencing certain performance problems. For example, in the event of a failure, system recovery sometimes takes several hours. A number of bugs causing this behavior can not be fixed for a long time. The community hopes that MongoDB will help Realm to correct the situation and resolve issues with stability and technical support.
/ Pxhere / pd
Since the beginning of the year there have been several large deals in the industry. In late January, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Citus Data, which is developing a PostgreSQL-based relational database. Citus Data was founded in 2010 and went through the Y Combinator incubator. The IT giant plans to use start-up practices to gain a competitive advantage in the cloud market.
Actively explore the direction associated with data storage, and began in Alibaba. Two years ago, the corporation bought MariaDB, an alternative to MySQL, and in early 2019, it acquired German startup Data Artisans, specializing in working with big data. The startup has its own dA platform for streaming data processing based on open source Apache Flink, which is used by Netflix, ING Group and Uber. The Chinese corporation also plans to use the capabilities of Data Artisans products in its solutions.
We can assume that by the end of this year we will hear about other major transactions. As a result, the market will have more products for the cloud and cloud systems that will more effectively solve business problems in a virtualized environment.
/ Pxhere / pd
What a deal
Realm (formerly tight.db) is a Danish startup founded in 2011. He is developing an open source database that provides object storage for mobile application information. The solution is multiplatform and is designed for Android and iOS. Realm has good documentation and there are examples on GitHub .
')
During its work, the startup has attracted more than $ 40 million in investments from venture capital firms Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures and Greylock Partners. Today, Realm is used in mobile applications by companies like Google, Starbucks, Netflix, McDonald's and eBay.
The prerequisite for the Realm and MongoDB deal was the desire of the latter to expand its influence in the field of mobile development. Last fall, the company introduced its MongoDB Mobile database. However, the product has not gained great popularity. In an interview with Eliot Horowitz, a major CTO news aggregator from Eliot Horowitz, many customers still chose the Realm product during mobile development.
Then MongoDB decided to join forces with a Danish startup, starting to work out the terms of the deal. As a result, the companies agreed on a price of $ 39 million.
What will it affect
Performance decisions. One of the key features of Realm is zero copy - the database supports operations during which the processor does not copy data from one memory area to another. Another important component is MVCC . This is a mechanism that provides parallel access to data. All users operate with their own personal database images (which are then synchronized), without blocking work with write / read transactions.
According to some estimates , the processing speed of requests in Realm differs from analogs (SQLite, greenDAO, OrmLite) by eight times. In this case, the Realm database works with so-called live objects — if the data in the database is updated, then all objects in the code that refer to them are updated.
These features will allow MongoDB to offer its customers more productive solutions for developing high-load applications. For example, new opportunities will open for IaaS-providers using the company's products.
Integration. Realm has an API set that gives developers the ability to build the business logic of an application in any programming language. Plus, the Realm mobile database supports iOS, Android, JavaScript web applications, and Xamarin.
MongoDB is also a cross-platform document-oriented NoSQL database. It is therefore not surprising that the company plans to integrate the functionality of Realm with some of its commercial products. New features will soon appear in the MongoDB Atlas cloud database and Stitch serverless computing platform that automates the generation of mobile push notifications.
Community development. By combining efforts in the development of a mobile database, companies hope to provide solutions that will eventually become a kind of standard for the new generation of connected services.
“The merger will allow MongoDB to expand its influence in the developer community. Realm has a base of 100,000 active users, ”commented Sergey Belkin, head of the virtual infrastructure provider 1cloud.ru development department . “Realm, in turn, will receive new technical opportunities for development and will be able to more quickly update its product.”
By the way, the developers, who plan to use Realm in the production environment, are counting on the latter. Today, the mobile database is experiencing certain performance problems. For example, in the event of a failure, system recovery sometimes takes several hours. A number of bugs causing this behavior can not be fixed for a long time. The community hopes that MongoDB will help Realm to correct the situation and resolve issues with stability and technical support.
/ Pxhere / pd
What else is happening in the market?
Since the beginning of the year there have been several large deals in the industry. In late January, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Citus Data, which is developing a PostgreSQL-based relational database. Citus Data was founded in 2010 and went through the Y Combinator incubator. The IT giant plans to use start-up practices to gain a competitive advantage in the cloud market.
Actively explore the direction associated with data storage, and began in Alibaba. Two years ago, the corporation bought MariaDB, an alternative to MySQL, and in early 2019, it acquired German startup Data Artisans, specializing in working with big data. The startup has its own dA platform for streaming data processing based on open source Apache Flink, which is used by Netflix, ING Group and Uber. The Chinese corporation also plans to use the capabilities of Data Artisans products in its solutions.
We can assume that by the end of this year we will hear about other major transactions. As a result, the market will have more products for the cloud and cloud systems that will more effectively solve business problems in a virtualized environment.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/452444/
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