YugabyteDB Tricks and Tips – Dec 6, 2019

Welcome to this week’s tips and tricks blog where we recap some distributed SQL questions from around the Internet. We’ll also review upcoming events, new blogs and documentation that has been published since the last blog. Got questions? Make sure to ask them on our YugabyteDB Slack channel, Forum, GitHub or Stackoverflow. Ok, let’s dive right in:

Do you have any plans to support UTF8MB4 like MySQL does?

Although, MySQL has supported 4-byte characters since 5.5.3, this was done because they did not correctly implement 4-byte UTF8 in the first go around. Originally, MySQL only implemented support for 3 byte encodings. UTF8 in YugabyteDB’s PostgreSQL-compatible SQL layer supports full 4 byte UTF8 encoding right from the get go.

In a YugabyteDB cluster, if node A cannot talk to node B, but node C can talk to A & B. Will A be marked as dead in the UI?

If node A is the leader, it will remain as part of the cluster because it has majority (A and C) so B will get marked as dead in the UI. If node B is the leader, then A will get marked as dead in the UI. If node C is the leader, from its point of view both nodes A and B are not dead.

Does the yaml file for deploying pods in YugabyteDB generate any certificate signing requests?

The Yugabyte platform supports generation of self-signed certificates for enabling SSL/TLS between client/server and server/server or by passing a certificate via an override to the HELM chart via our Yugabyte orchestration platform.

Is it possible to use EBS snapshots as a backup strategy for YugabyteDB nodes running in AWS? If not, why?

Disk based backups would also miss in-flight updates. Users should use the backup commands native to YugabyteDB. The only way EBS would work as an effective backup strategy is if the database was offline during the backup.

New Documentation, Blogs, Tutorials, and Videos

New Blogs

• Getting Started with PostgreSQL’s Row-Level Security in YugabyteDB
• Using Stored Procedures in Distributed SQL Databases
• Announcing YugabyteDB on Crossplane, the Open Source Multicloud Control Plane
• What is Distributed SQL?
• How Plume Handled Billions of Operations Per Day Despite an AWS Zone Outage

New Videos

• Getting Started with PostgreSQL’s Row-Level Security in YugabyteDB
• Designing a Change Data Capture and Two Data Center Architecture for a Distributed SQL Database
• Distributed Databases Deconstructed: CockroachDB, TiDB and YugabyteDB
• We have uploaded over a dozen videos from this year’s Distributed SQL Summit. You can links to the presentations, slides and a recap of the highlights by checking out, “2019 Distributed SQL Summit Recap and Highlights.”

New Docs

• Using PostgreSQL’s JDBC Driver
• YugabyteDB configuration reference documentation for TServer, Master nodes and port assignments
• Two data center (2DC) deployment instructions

Upcoming Meetups and Conferences

PostgreSQL Meetups

• Jan 16: Silicon Valley PostgreSQL Meetup

Distributed SQL Webinars

• Dec 11: Developing Microservices with Istio Service Mesh and Distributed SQL
• Dec 18: Distributed SQL Database Administration 101
• Jan 15: Developing Cloud-Native Spring Microservices with a Distributed SQL Backend

We are Hiring!

YugaByte is growing fast and we’d like you to help us keep the momentum going! Check out our currently open positions:

• Software Engineer – Cloud Infrastructure – Sunnyvale, CA
• Software Engineer – Core Database – Sunnyvale, CA
• Software Engineer – Full Stack – Sunnyvale, CA
• Developer Advocate – Sunnyvale, CA
• Senior Technical Writer – Remote

Our team consists of domain experts from leading software companies such as Facebook, Oracle, Nutanix, Google and LinkedIn. We have come a long way in a short time but we cannot rest on our past accomplishments. We need your ideas and skills to make us better at every function that is necessary to create the next great software company. All while having tons of fun and blazing new trails!

Get Started

Ready to start exploring YugabyteDB features? Getting up and running locally on your laptop is fast. Visit our quickstart page to get started.

What’s Next?

• Compare YugabyteDB in depth to databases like CockroachDB, Google Cloud Spanner and MongoDB.
• Get started with YugabyteDB on macOS, Linux, Docker, and Kubernetes.
• Contact us to learn more about licensing, pricing or to schedule a technical overview.