The GeekNarrator

Welcome to The GeekNarrator podcast! In this episode, host Kaivalya Apte goes deeper into the practical applications of formal methods with Jack Vanlightly, a principal technologist at Confluent. With years of experience in distributed systems, Jack discusses his journey and how formal methods have been instrumental in system design verification and bug detection. The conversation covers Jack's ba...

Database Internals - NileDB: Postgres Re-engineered for Multitenant Apps with Gwen Shapira Join us in this episode as we dive deep into the intricacies of NileDB, a groundbreaking database re-engineered for multi-tenant applications. Our special guest, Gwen Shapira, co-founder of NileDB and a notable figure in the database field, shares her insights and technical know-how on solving the common cha...

Building a Continuous Profiler with Frederic from Polar Signals | Geek Narrator Podcast In this episode we chat with Frederic from Polar Signals. We dive deep into the intricacies of building a continuous profiler, the challenges faced, and the unique solutions developed by Polar Signals. Frederic shares insights from his background in observability and discusses the innovations in FrostDB, a cust...

Welcome back to another episode! Today, I have a special guest, Chris Riccomini, joining me to delve into the exciting world of databases. In this episode, we focus on SlateDB, a new and innovative database that's making waves in the tech community. We'll cover a wide range of topics, including the architecture of SlateDB, its internals, design decisions, and some fascinating use cases. Chris, a s...

In this video I talk to Jayaprabhakar Kadarkarai aka JP who is the founder of FizzBee. FizzBee is a design specification language and model checker to help developers verify their design before writing even a single line of implementation code. We have discussed where it is applicable, what are the benefits, how does it work and many other interesting challenges with examples. Chapters: 00:00 Intr...

In this episode of The Geek Narrator podcast, hosted by Kaivalya Apte, we welcome a special guest, Kishore Gopalakrishna from StarTree, co-author of Apache Pinot and other notable projects. Kishore shares his extensive experience in building real-time analytics and streaming systems, including Apache Pino, Espresso, Apache Helix, and Third Eye. The episode delves into the motivations and challenge...

In this episode of The GeekNarrator podcast, host Kaivalya Apte interviews Ryan and Richie, the founders of WarpStream. They discuss the architecture, benefits, and core functionalities of WarpStream, a drop-in replacement for Apache Kafka. The conversation covers their experience with Kafka, the design decisions behind WarpStream, and the operational challenges it addresses. They also delve into...

Exploring XTDB with Jeremy Taylor & Malcolm Sparks: An In-Depth Dive into Immutability and Database Internals In this episode of the Geek Narrator Podcast, host Kaivalya is joined by Jeremy Taylor and Malcolm Sparks from Juxt to explore XTDB, an immutable database designed to handle complex historical and financial data with precision. They delve into the architecture, internal mechanics, and...

In this episode of The GeekNarrator podcast, host Kaivalya Apte dives into the complexities of testing distributed systems with Will Wilson from Antithesis. If you’re grappling with the challenges of testing databases, micro-services, and distributed systems, this episode is a must-watch. Will Wilson demystifies the concept of deterministic simulation testing, shares insights about its advantages...

Exploring Turso with Glauber Costa: Insights on SQLite for Production In this episode of The GeekNarrator podcast, host Kaivalya Apte interviews Glauber Costa, founder and CEO of TursoDB. They discuss the inception of TursoDB, Glauber's background in Linux kernel development, and the journey from unikernel projects to founding a database company. Glauber explains TursoDB's enhancements to...

Deep Dive into Serverless Databases with Neon: Featuring Heikki Linnakangas In this episode of the Geek Narrator podcast, host Kaivalya Apte is joined by Heikki Linnakangas, co-founder of Neon, to explore the innovative world of serverless databases. They discuss Neon's unique approach to separating compute and storage, the benefits of serverless architecture for modern applications, and dive...

In this video I speak with Felix GV, who is a Principal Staff Engineer at Linkedin, and has done major contributions to the data infrastructure and Linkedin, including VeniceDB. This episode will give you a good understanding of why we need a new database for storing "Derived Data" in a low latency, high performance manner, which is very important for Machine Learning workloads. Chapters...

In this video I speak with Philippe Noël, about ParadeDB, which is an Elasticsearch alternative built on Postgres, modernizing the features of Elasticsearch's product suite, starting with real-time search and analytics. I hope you will enjoy and learn about the product. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:12 Challenges with Elasticsearch and the Need for ParadeDB 02:29 Why Postgres? 06:30 Technica...

In this video I speak with Andrew Lamb, Staff Software Engineer @Influxdb. We discuss FDAP (Flight, DataFusion, Arrow, Parquet) stack for modern OLAP database system design. Andrew shared some insights into why the FDAP stack is so powerful in designing and implementing a modern OLAP database. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:48 Understanding Analytics: Transactional vs Analytical Databases 04:41 T...

In this video I and Pratim Bhosale, Developer Advocate at SurrealDB, talk about SurrealDB, a multi-model database which aims to make Developer’s life easier by letting them focus mainly on the business logic and not on the Database choice. Following chapters will help you understand what is a multi-model database and how SurrealDB shines. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:48 The Genesis of SurrealDB...

In this video, I talk to Dhruba, CTO @Rockset about search and realtime analytics. We discussed deep internals of Rockset, its architecture and why is it a great fit for search and realtime analytics use cases. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 02:45 The Evolution of Data Systems: From Hadoop to Rockset 07:30 Understanding Rockset: Real-Time Analytics and Search Defined 12:01 The Technical Edge: Rockse...

In this episode we explore how to Rapidly Simulate Production Traffic with Michael Drogalis, using his creation ShadowTraffic. I am sure you will be able to relate to all the different problems mentioned in this episode and like how ShadowTraffic aims to solve those problems. I hope you like this conversation. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to The Geek Narrator Podcast: Exploring Deep Tech 00:18 The Chal...

If you're involved in the Java space, chances are you've come across #GraalVM. And for those active in the tech community, you might have heard about the recent 1BRC challenge initiated by Gunnar Morling. GraalVM truly showcased its capabilities in this challenge, sparking my curiosity. That's why I reached out to Alina to delve deeper into GraalVM, exploring its features and uncoverin...

In this episode I am talking to Javier Ramirez from QuestDB, about everything QuestDB. This episode is a great resource to understand how QuestDB works, its architecture, what is it optimised for and whats upcoming as per the roadmap. If you have timeseries data and need a simple yet highly scalable solution, #QuestDB is a great option. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 03:04 Understanding QuestDB: Ori...

In this episode I talk to Andras Gerlits, who founded omniledger.io. Andras has a very interesting view on how Distributed Consistency should work that can get rid of several bottlenecks when it comes to maintaining Distributed consistency. He argues how getting rid of a global wall clock and using causality to approach Distributed consistency helps you build resilient, simple and performant syste...

In this video I talk to Semih Salihoglu about KuzuDB : A highly scalable, extremely fast, easy to use embeddable Graph Database. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 00:40 The Genesis of KuzuDB: From Academic Research to Startup 06:40 Graph Databases 101: Understanding the Basics and Beyond 10:24 When to Opt for a Graph Database: Use Cases and Advantages 19:16 KuzuDB vs. Traditional Databases: A Comparati...

In this video, I talk to Stephan Ewen from Restate, who is popularly known from the world of Apache Flink. We have talked about the problems in the world of Distributed systems and the complex solutions developers have to deal with. This complexity makes the architecture so complex that it eventually creates reliability, Observability and delivery velocity problems. Restate aims to solve it by mak...

In this episode of The GeekNarrator podcast, our host Kaivalya talks to Seeta Somagani from Volt Active Data, a low latency stream processing platform. They discuss fascinating topics about what low latency stream processing means, the different guarantees that Volt Active Data provides, and the various problems it can solve. They delve into the evolution of VoltDB to Volt Active Data, real-time d...

In an enlightening episode of the GeekNarrator Podcast, host Kaivalya Apte and TigerBeetle's CEO, Joran, delve deep into the world of online transaction processing (OLTP). They discuss the origin, unique architecture, and innovative methodologies behind TigerBeetle, a database tailored to efficiently handle high-volume transaction systems. The podcast explores the system's key features suc...

In this episode, we dive deep into the world of clean coding with none other than the master and pioneer of the field, Uncle Bob. We explore the nuances and the art behind writing effective and efficient scripts. This conversation covers the nitty-gritty of writing and editing scripts, from understanding how to break down large functions, to discussing principles like 'Single Responsibility Pr...