Database Guru on Vonng

MySQL 9.7: Same Old Leftovers, Reheated

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

MySQL 9.7 is the first LTS release in the 9.x line. Its vector support is still all show, its years-late optimizer is disabled by default, and three years of Innovation Releases have produced remarkably little.

Two months into maintaining a MinIO fork

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two months after forking MinIO, pgsty/minio ships patches for four CVEs and related security issues. No new features — just working builds, a restored console, and timely security fixes.

Put Your AI Agent's State in a Database

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Put an AI agent’s working directory, configuration, and memory on a PGFS mount, and you are effectively storing its state in PostgreSQL. That gives you not only a PITR “time machine,” but also a shared workspace and shared memory for multiple agents across multiple devices.

360 Shipped Its Wildcard TLS Private Key Inside a Public Installer

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

360’s newly released AI Agent product shipped a public installer containing the private key for its *.myclaw.360.cn wildcard certificate. Public verification and local reproduction also exposed inconsistencies in the OCSP revocation path.

After the Debate, Let's Talk Seriously About 'Ontology'

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Palantir’s Ontology is, technically, data modeling. The more interesting question is how a philosophy term got repurposed to market system integration and data modeling, and why that story is so likely to turn into another round of concept inflation in China’s tech ecosystem.

InsForge: A Supabase Built for Vibe Coding

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

InsForge tries to package PostgreSQL, auth, storage, deployment, and an MCP-facing semantic layer into a backend stack designed for AI agents. It feels like a Supabase rebuilt for the vibe-coding era.

Palantir's Ontology Narrative

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ontology is largely a data-modeling method. In enterprise practice, much of it overlaps with familiar database concepts, while the framing can make it feel newer and more differentiated than it really is.

I Finished Translating the Second Edition of DDIA: An Eight-Year Parable About AI

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Codex translated DDIA’s second edition in a single morning. Eight years ago, I spent three months translating the first edition by hand. The contrast reveals just how far AI has come.

MinIO Is Dead, Long Live MinIO

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

MinIO’s repo is officially archived and abandoned. And how AI Agents helped bring it back from the dead. This post explains how a community fork restores the admin console and ships binaries via CI/CD pipeline.

Data 2025: The year in review with Mike Stonebraker

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A conversation between Mike Stonebraker (MIT CSAIL, Turing Award Winner, Creator of PostgreSQL), Andy Pavlo (Carnegie Mellon University), and the DBOS team.

What Kind of Database Do AI Agents Need?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The bottleneck for AI agents is not the database kernel, but integration above it. Muscle memory (in-database computation), associative memory (vector-graph fusion), and the courage to experiment (Git for Data) will be critical—none of them requires a new engine.

MySQL and Baijiu: The Internet’s Obedience Test

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

MySQL is to the internet what baijiu is to China: harsh, hard to swallow, yet worshipped because culture demands obedience. Both are loyalty tests—will you endure discomfort to fit in?

Victoria: The Observability Stack That Slaps the Industry

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

VictoriaMetrics is brutally efficient—using a fraction of Prometheus + Loki’s resources for multiples of the performance. Pigsty v4 swaps to the Victoria stack; here’s the beta for anyone eager to try it.

MinIO Is Dead. Who Picks Up the Pieces?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

MinIO just entered maintenance mode. What replaces it? Can RustFS step in? I tested the contenders so you don’t have to.

MinIO is Dead

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

MinIO announces it is entering maintenance mode, the dragon-slayer has become the dragon – how MinIO transformed from an open-source S3 alternative to just another commercial software company

When Answers Become Abundant, Questions Become the New Currency

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Your ability to ask questions—and your taste in what to ask—determines your position in the AI era. When answers become commodities, good questions become the new wealth. We are living in the moment this prophecy comes true.

On Trusting Open-Source Supply Chains

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In serious production you can’t rely on an upstream that explicitly says “no guarantees.” When someone says “don’t count on me,” the right answer is “then I’ll run it myself.”

Don't Run Docker Postgres for Production!

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tons of users running the official docker postgres image got burned during recent minor version upgrades. A friendly reminder: think twice before containerizing production databases.

DDIA 2nd Edition, Chinese Translation

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The second edition of Designing Data-Intensive Applications has released ten chapters. I translated them into Chinese and rebuilt a clean Hugo/Hextra web version for the community.

Column: Database Guru

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The database world is full of hype and marketing fog. This column cuts through it with blunt commentary, case studies, and technical deep dives.

Dongchedi Just Exposed “Smart Driving.” Where’s Our Dongku-Di?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Imagine a “closed-course” shootout for domestic databases and clouds, the way Dongchedi just humiliated 30+ autonomous cars. This industry needs its own stress test.

Where Will Databases and DBAs Go in the AI Era?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Who will be revolutionized first - OLTP or OLAP? Integration vs specialization, how to choose? Where will DBAs go in the AI era? Feng’s views from the HOW 2025 conference roundtable, organized and published.

Stop Arguing, The AI Era Database Has Been Settled

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The database for the AI era has been settled. Capital markets are making intensive moves on PostgreSQL targets, with PG having become the default database for the AI era.

Scaling Postgres to the next level at OpenAI

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At PGConf.Dev 2025, Bohan Zhang from OpenAI shared a session titled Scaling Postgres to the next level at OpenAI, giving us a peek into the database usage of a top-tier unicorn.

How Many Shops Has etcd Torched?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Plenty. If you’re rolling your own Kubernetes, odds are you’ll crash because etcd ships with a 2 GB time bomb.

MySQL vs. PostgreSQL @ 2025

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A 2025 reality check on where PostgreSQL stands relative to MySQL across features, performance, quality, and ecosystem.

Database Planet Collision: When PG Falls for DuckDB

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If you ask me, we’re on the brink of a cosmic collision in database-land, and Postgres + DuckDB is the meteor we should all be watching.

Comparing Oracle and PostgreSQL Transaction Systems

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The PG community has started punching up: Cybertec’s Laurenz Albe breaks down how Oracle’s transaction system stacks against PostgreSQL.

Database as Business Architecture

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Databases are the core of business architecture, but what happens if we go further and let databases become the business architecture itself?

7 Databases in 7 Weeks (2025)

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Is PostgreSQL the king of boring databases? Here are seven databases worth studying in 2025: PostgreSQL, SQLite, DuckDB, ClickHouse, FoundationDB, TigerBeetle, and CockroachDB—each deserving a week of deep exploration.

Solving the 24-Point Card Game with a Single SQL Query

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A fun but devious challenge: solve the 24-point card game in SQL. Here is the PostgreSQL answer.

Self-Hosting Supabase on PostgreSQL

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Supabase is great, own your own Supabase is even better. A tutorial for self-hosting production-grade supabase on local/cloud/ VM/BMs.

Open-Source "Tyrant" Linus's Purge

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Linux community is essentially imperial — and Linus himself is the earliest and most successful technical dictator. People are used to Linus’s generosity but forget this point.

Optimize Bio Cores First, CPU Cores Second

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Programmers are expensive, scarce biological computing cores, the anchor point of software costs — please prioritize optimizing biological cores before optimizing CPU cores.

MongoDB Has No Future: Good Marketing Can't Save a Rotten Mango

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

MongoDB has a terrible track record on integrity, lackluster products and technology, gets beaten by PG in correctness, performance, and functionality, with collapsing developer reputation, declining popularity, stock price halving, and expanding losses. Provocative marketing against PG can’t save it with “good marketing.”

MongoDB: Now Powered by PostgreSQL?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

MongoDB 3.2’s analytics subsystem turned out to be an embedded PostgreSQL database? A whistleblowing story from MongoDB’s partner about betrayal and disillusionment.

CVE-2024-6387 SSH Vulnerability Fix

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This vulnerability affects EL9, Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12. Users should promptly update OpenSSH to fix this vulnerability.

Can Chinese Domestic Databases Really Compete?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Friends often ask me, can Chinese domestic databases really compete? To be honest, it’s a question that offends people. So let’s try speaking with data - I hope the charts provided in this article can help readers understand the database ecosystem landscape and establish more accurate proportional awareness.

The $20 Brother PolarDB: What Should Databases Actually Cost?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today we discuss the fair pricing of commercial databases, open-source databases, cloud databases, and domestic Chinese databases.

Redis Going Non-Open-Source is a Disgrace to "Open-Source" and Public Cloud

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Redis “going non-open source” is not a disgrace to Redis, but a disgrace to “open source/OSI” and even more so to public cloud. What truly matters has always been software freedom, while open source is just one means to achieve software freedom.

MySQL's ACID is a real mess

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

MySQL’s transaction ACID has flaws and doesn’t match documentation promises. This may lead to serious correctness issues - use with caution.

Database in K8S: Pros & Cons

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Whether databases should be housed in Kubernetes/Docker remains highly controversial. It has fundamental drawbacks with stateful services.

Are Specialized Vector Databases Dead?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Vector storage and retrieval is a real need, but specialized vector databases are already dead. Small needs are solved by OpenAI directly, standard needs are captured by existing mature databases with vector extensions. The ecological niche left for specialized vector databases might support one company, but trying to build an industry around AI stories is impossible.

Are Databases Really Being Strangled?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Many “domestic databases” are just shoddy, inferior products that can’t be helped. Xinchuang domestic OS/databases are essentially IT pre-made meals in schools. Users hold their noses while migrating, developers pretend to work hard, and everyone plays along with leaders who neither understand nor care about technology. The infrastructure software industry isn’t being strangled by anyone - the real chokehold comes from the so-called “insiders.”

Which EL-Series OS Distribution Is Best?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

RHEL-series OS distribution compatibility level: RHEL = Rocky ≈ Anolis > Alma > Oracle » Euler. Recommend using RockyLinux 8.8, or Anolis 8.8 for domestic requirements.

What Kind of Self-Reliance Do Infra Software Need?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When we talk about self-reliance and control, what are we really talking about? Operational self-reliance vs. R&D self-reliance - what nations/users truly need is the former, not flashy “self-research”.

Back to Basics: Tech Reflection Chronicles

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The cost-cutting imperative has triggered a reevaluation of all technologies, including databases. This series critiques hot DB technologies and poses fundamental questions about their trade-offs: Are cloud databases, distributed databases, microservices, and containerization real needs or false hype?

Database Demand Hierarchy Pyramid

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, user demands for databases also have a progressive hierarchy: physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs, cognitive needs, aesthetic needs, self-actualization needs, and transcendence needs.

NewSQL: Distributive Nonsens

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As hardware technology advances, the capacity and performance of standalone databases have reached unprecedented heights. which makes distributed (TP) databases appear utterly powerless, much like the “data middle platform,” donning the emperor’s new clothes in a state of self-deception.

Is running postgres in docker a good idea?

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Thou shalt not run a prod database inside a container

Understanding Time - Leap Years, Leap Seconds, Time and Time Zones

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A proper understanding of time is very helpful for correctly handling time-related issues in work and life. For example, time representation and processing in computers, as well as time handling in databases and programming languages.

Understanding Character Encoding Principles

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Without understanding the basic principles of character encoding, even simple string operations like comparison, sorting, and random access can easily lead you into pitfalls. This article attempts to clarify these issues through a comprehensive explanation.

Concurrency Anomalies Explained

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Concurrent programs are hard to write correctly and even harder to write well. Many programmers simply throw these problems at the database… But even the most sophisticated databases won’t help if you don’t understand concurrency anomalies and isolation levels.

Blockchain and Distributed Databases

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The technical essence, functionality, and evolution of blockchain is distributed databases. Specifically, it’s a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (resistant to malicious node attacks) distributed (leaderless replication) database.

Consistency: An Overloaded Term

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Tue, 08 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The term “consistency” is heavily overloaded, representing different concepts in different contexts. For example, the C in ACID and the C in CAP actually refer to different concepts.

Why Study Database Principles

rh@vonng.com (Ruohang Feng) — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Those who only know how to code are just programmers; learn databases well, and you can at least make a living; but for excellent engineers, merely using databases is far from enough.