TALKS

Pat Helland and Me

Pat Helland and Me: How to build stateful distributed applications that can scale almost infinitely

Abstract

In 2007, Pat Helland published “Life Beyond Distributed Transactions: An Apostate’s Opinion” in which he conducts a thought experiment on how to design a distributed database that can scale almost infinitely. While the paper explicitly addresses distributed database design, Sean T. Allen shows that the ideas are far more widely applicable, particularly in scaling stateful applications. Sean explores some of Helland’s ideas through practical examples from his experience building data processing systems using tools like Apache Storm and, more recently, developing a stateful distributed stream processor at Wallaroo Labs.

Versions of this talk

Pat Helland and Me has evolved quite a bit as I’ve given in. The 2nd half of the VelocityConf San Jose version is very different than any of the other versions. It’s very heavy on “this you need to consider if you are using this architectural pattern”. The later versions got rid of that end and instead focus on giving an example (via Wallaroo) of a scale-independent system.

If you are only going to watch one version of this talk, I’d advise watching the Papers We Love San Francisco version. It’s my favorite version.

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Additional references

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