SurrealDB
Immutable NewSQL OLAP Serverless
SurrealDB is a multi-model DBMS that supports embedded and shared-nothing deployments. It uses a hybrid data model that combines documents with explicit graph edge relationships.
History
The work on SurrealDB was started in 2016 by Tobie and Jamie Morgan Hitchcock as a private project. The first functional version of SurrealDB was completed in 2017 and it was written completely in Go. In 2021, the source code for the SurrealDB project was made public to allow contributions from the outside world. Work on building an improved version of SurrealDB with Rust from scratch also begin in 2021. In 2022, SurrealDB was released in public beta mode.
Data Model
Relational Document / XML Graph
SurrealDB supports relational, document, and graph-based data models. By default, SurrealDB creates schema-less documents, however the SurrealQL syntax provides functionality for creating fixed-schema tables as well. Graph-based models are constructed by representing the nodes and the edges as relations that are related by record links.
Joins
SurrealDB does have the concept of joins. Instead of Joins between pre-defined relations, SurrealDB uses graph edges (record links) to link records to each other. With graph edges and the ability to store arrays and objects as field members, SurrealDB can provide the functionality of Joins along with other graph-based operations like path traversal.
Parallel Execution
Intra-Operator (Horizontal) Inter-Operator (Vertical)
SurrealDB allows a PARALLEL keyword to be added to most queries. This allows SurrealDB to spawn multiple threads to execute fetch and update operations. Using this SurrealDB is able to fetch data form relations in parallel by spawning one thread per relation. Further it is able to run the insert/update/delete operations for each row in parallel since it uses a row-by-row iteration model.
Query Interface
Custom API SQL HTTP / REST RPC
SurrealDB can be started as an independent process or embedded in the application as a library. As an independent process, it is possible to interact with the database using either the SurrealQL REPL (if SurrealDB is running locally), or using the HTTP/REST endpoints. As a library, SurrealDB can be used in other applications by interfacing with the APIs provided by the SurrealDB library. SurrealDB also provides the WebSocket API which can be interfaced with using RPCs.
Storage Architecture
SurrealDB can support 3 types of storage architectures: in-memory; on-disk; and distributed cloud. Since SurrealDB uses other key-value store databases to provide storage functionality, it is able to take advantage of all storage architectures supported by those key-value stores. Currently, the in-memory mode is supported using EchoDB. on-disk mode is supported through databases like RocksDB, and distributed cloud storage is supported by databases like TiKV.
Storage Model
SurrealDB does not implement its own storage layer. It relies on other key-value store databases to provide storage functionality for the user data and metadata. However, SurrealDB can only support key-value stores as the storage layer. All data in SurrealDB is eventually stored in the key-value format after internal processing.
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Website
Source Code
https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb
Tech Docs
Developer
SurrealDB Ltd.
Country of Origin
Start Year
2016
Project Type
Written in
Supported languages
Go, JavaScript, Rust
Embeds / Uses
EchoDB, FoundationDB, RocksDB, TiKV
Compatible With
EchoDB, FoundationDB, RocksDB, TiKV