SingleStore speeds up my daily workflow
What do you like best about the product?
I use Singlestore daily, and it has great features. Their docs are very thorough, which makes it easy to find answers to question. Their support is very responsive.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some of things inherent with the implementation of SingleStore make some tasks tedious, such as updating an enum column.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SignleStore allows our users to get data fast. The MySql flavor it uses makes it easy for us to query the data and find insights quickly. It also allows us to ingest massive amount of data quickly.
Singlestore review
What do you like best about the product?
The fact that it's the best of both worlds of row store and column store. It's easy to use and setup. We've been using it for a lot of our high throughput use cases and it has worked wonders.
What do you dislike about the product?
A lot of the technology and functionality as it comes with a proprietary database is under the hood which makes is difficult to debug issues. And it takes a lot of back and forth with their support team to explain the issue and hopefully get a resolution.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Giving us the best of both worls of row store and column store so that we can do real time aggregates as well as individual row retrieval.
User Friendly and Reliable in-memory DB
What do you like best about the product?
Accessing and Loading relational data into tables is pretty efficient, reliable and fast.
Having Singlestore employee as a consultant in the organisation helped us get answers from Singlestore to resolve a lot of minor issues and questions we had with this product.
What do you dislike about the product?
It lacks replication product to replicate data on table by table basis from one cluster to another remote cluster.
We need a reject file created for all rejected rows during pipeline load of millions of rows of a table, instead of abending at the first rejected row.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Transferring Data from Mainframe DB to in-memory DB on distributed platform is our long term goal. Also one of directive from our management is to have a never-down DB and Singlestore is the DB we are going to use to achieve it for our application.
Supports in-memory data types, storing data on RAM for high performance
What is our primary use case?
I worked for a company that outsourced tasks for SingleStore. I mainly worked with one customer who was a video platform. Their primary use case was storing metadata for their videos. They offered recording and playback services for TV shows in the US and Canada, and SingleStore efficiently managed the metadata for all these recordings.
There's a wide range of professionals using SingleStore, You can find more details on their website.
How has it helped my organization?
Since it is not as costly as Oracle or other database counterparts, that's one benefit. And the speed is very fast. It supports in-memory data types, storing data on RAM for blazing-fast performance. That's the highlight; it's perfect for both OLTP and analytical workloads.
What is most valuable?
It's a distributed relational database, so it does not have a single server, it has multiple servers. Its architecture itself is fast because it has multiple nodes to distribute the workload and process large amounts of data. I heard a client processed 3.5 billion records in seven minutes! Their data ingestion is very high, and SingleStore even markets itself as the world's fastest database.
What needs improvement?
For new customers, it's very tough to start. Their documentation isn't organized, and there's no online training available. SingleStore is working on it, but that's a major drawback.
Also, technically, SingleStore needs more features on the SQL part. Most SQL boards work in MySQL, and SingleStore integrated all its sequel with MySQL, so nearly 99% of MySQL code runs on SingleStore. But features like TVF and UDL lack depth. Users have to walk into it, and SingleStore has minimal features there.
IUDF, TVF, and stored procedures are not as advanced as SQL Server's. That's one thing I would like to see improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I worked with SingleStore just two months before resigning from my previous company. I have over two years of experience with it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution. Any downtime I've seen was due to application or software bugs, not SingleStore. Human errors happen, but the system itself is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a highly scalable solution. SingleStore has servers, separated into two parts. One aggregates queries (gateway nodes), and the other stores data (leaf nodes).
To increase database size, you simply add more servers. There's minimal downtime during rebalancing, maybe a minute or two. You can add as many servers as you need without taking anything offline. That's what makes it highly scalable.
How are customer service and support?
We mostly handled day-to-day maintenance. But for the real heavy lifting, there's a separate team in SingleStore. It's all handled through one ticketing tool, Zendesk. You're a registered customer, you log a ticket, and they prioritize and address them accordingly.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
SingleStore offers cloud and bare-metal installations.
Cloud hosting is simple; you pay hourly and follow their cloud UI instructions. Anyone, even someone less technical, can install it.
For bare metal VMs, it might take a day for a new technical person, but an experienced one can do it in an hour. It's quite easy.
The customer I supported had an on-premises SingleStore cluster running on bare metal.
What about the implementation team?
One technical person is enough for deployment if it's not a production-grade cluster. For testing, one or two days should be max.
For production-grade clusters, you might need professional services. SingleStore also offers database architects and consultants to help design your cluster architecture, hardware selection, license units, etc. They basically do everything for you, from designing the blueprint to setting up hardware and licenses. So, professional services are highly recommended for production environments.
If you have many clusters (over 10-15), you might need a team of 3-4 people for maintenance. But for 1-2 servers, you can handle it yourself. It's easy after the initial learning curve. And best of all, no downtime! You can perform maintenance tasks online, like adding a new service ID or scaling your cluster, without impacting your business.
The product offers high availability. Two copies of data at all times, so even if one server goes down, your application stays up. That makes maintenance even easier. You can take a server down, fix it, and put it back without impacting users. This makes maintenance very easy.
As long as one server is running, you're good. The only limitation to high availability is the increased cost. You need more servers, which means more money. Think of it like this: without high availability, you'd need X servers. With it, you'd need 2X servers. Hardware costs go up.
What was our ROI?
I had a customer I worked with for five years who kept adding new customers throughout. SingleStore provides significant cost-based value to companies.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is available on the website, https://www.singlestore.com/pr.... They have two main options: cloud installation and bare-metal installation, each with different pricing models.
For cloud services, they offer three tiers: Standard, Premium, and Dedicated. Standard starts at just $0.80 per hour. This is for the standard cloud service.
Now, for self-managed on-premises clusters, they provide free licensing up to four units. If you need premium features or enterprise support, like direct access to their support team, you'd need to purchase their enterprise license. For specific pricing on those, I recommend contacting their sales team directly.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I'm currently focusing on C++, building my resume for web development. I want to be a programmer and build things, not work in a service-based company. That's why I moved on. But I'm happy to help with any service-related tasks or where my two years of SingleStore experience might be useful.
What other advice do I have?
Online resources are limited since it's a new database. So, first, read the documentation to understand the basics. Then, approach them directly and explain your specific use case for the database.
Their sales team is very responsive and can help you get started. I highly recommend this database, but do your research first because online materials are scarce. Just understand the basic terms and policies in the docs, then contact them to set up your clusters.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
High-speed data processing, seamless scalability, and excellent high availability making it an optimal choice for those prioritizing performance and efficiency in a database solution
What is our primary use case?
The issue we encountered was the inability to efficiently extract and evaluate our data from existing databases, causing limitations with Tableau, which struggled to handle datasets exceeding a hundred million records. Consequently, we explored alternative systems and initially attempted to access all data from target systems. In pursuit of faster and more effective data management, we considered Exasol as an alternative OLAP system. Ultimately, we opted for SingleStore.
What is most valuable?
The paramount advantage is the exceptional speed. Another noteworthy aspect of our experience is that, upon its setup, there aren't any issues that necessitate the intervention of a DBA. In terms of performance, it has proven impressive, particularly in handling complex joins without the need for data shortening. It excels in executing complex SQL operations swiftly.
What needs improvement?
There's a noteworthy consideration when it comes to collecting massive amounts of data. It is not the optimal choice for direct data collection through queries, and it's more suited for aggregation tasks. Attempting to use it for direct extraction, for instance, might lead to memory-related challenges. While MySQL version five might lack extensive SQL capabilities, SingleStore also has its constraints, requiring simpler SQL writing. This becomes evident when seeking advanced functionalities like window functions or JSON functions, where SingleStore doesn't offer an extensive toolkit, necessitating a more straightforward approach to SQL.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have used it for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate its stability capabilities ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding scalability, we did encounter occasional challenges as our data grew larger, resulting in potential out-of-memory issues. The resolution to this depends on the budget allocated. If budget constraints are not a concern, opting for a SaaS system is a viable solution, albeit with associated costs. Scaling the system incurs expenses for each additional node. I would rate it seven out of ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I use Exasol, and it has proven to be highly effective. However, when considering factors such as cost, financial aspects, SQL version capabilities, and insertion times, there are certain drawbacks. Specifically, the performance in terms of insertion times is notably subpar.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment process was remarkably swift, taking only one or two days, and we encountered no issues throughout the entire setup.
What other advice do I have?
If simplicity, quick data insertion, minimal complexity, and high availability are your primary concerns, and budget constraints aren't a major issue, then SingleStore is an excellent choice. I would rate it eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Amazing solution
What do you like best about the product?
I liked the speed to upload data and the potential to load big volumes so it is solution that thinks out of box.
What do you dislike about the product?
The GUI is not so clear, sometimes is difficult to find some obvious thing like create a database
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I have seen the potential to load big volumes of files so I am interesting to see how it works to query and aggregate big volumes as well with multiples joins.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
I really recommend for companies that it is starting to think in big data world.
SingleStore is a great solution to help build data-intensive, cloud-based applications.
What do you like best about the product?
My experience was good. The concept of a super-fast, cloud-native ACID database is of course very attractive, and I think the implementation is adequate for the most part.
The innovations brought to the table with SingleStore's Codegen Architecture and Universal Storage. I experimented with the sample databases provided, and the queries were indeed very fast and responsive, even when I deliberately made then very awkard and convoluted. Setting up the AWS cluster was also very easy and straight-forward. The support team was also cordial and helpful.
What do you dislike about the product?
My main concern is with the documentation and user experience. The docs and articles are a bit outdated and the examples provided do not work as intended. For example, the process to set up a data pipeline described here (https://developers.singlestore.com/blog/how-to-load-100-billion-rows-of-data-ultrafast/?utm_source=upwork&utm_medium=psm&utm_campaign=7014x000002ltsdqak&utm_content=fastapps) does not work. Besides, many pages still refer to SingleStore as MemSQL.
I also found it a bit hard to locate the access point for SingleStore Studio.
Query errors could be more explicit. When I input an invalid query, the error message is some variant of (ERROR 1064 ER_PARSE_ERROR: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near), which is a bit cryptic and not very helpful.
If I could, I'd allow more SQL flavours to be used, as not everyone is familiar with MySQL's peculiarities. I also would open source as many key database developments as possible, to make new discoveries more accesible to the world.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The need for SingleStore DB system arises whenever you would need a way to quickly setup and manage a huge database (more than 1B rows). I think the product correctly combines the advantages of ACID guarantees with cloud-based scalability
I'd definetly consider using SingleStore if I had to build a data-intensive web application.
Running things on the cloud can be a little tricky and expenses can pile up if you're not careful. However, doing it correctly will get rid of a lot of headaches in SWE and make your product better for developers and consumers.
SingleStore Advantage
What do you like best about the product?
"I think the success of SingleStore will align with the adoption of HTAP. The detailed processing of large volumes of data with real-time Analytics will magnify the benefits of SingleStore."
What do you dislike about the product?
SingleStore's success is based on the widespread adoption of HTAP, which does not have a large following at this time.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Concurrent loading and analytics
Amazon RDS Cluster is managed efficiently thanks to SingleStore DB
What do you like best about the product?
SingleStore DB is effective for managing all database applications and their dependencies from both on-premise and cloud platforms. It provides super-fast insights about the ingestion and performance statestics whenever a DB query is processed. It provides excellent data redundancy capabilities in which multiple operational data connectors can work together to share resources within that particular data cluster. SingleStore DB manages all the synchronization issues in case if a cluster malfunctions as it ensures that we are able to access our database from other regions.
What do you dislike about the product?
I don't find anything to dislike about SingleStore DB as its great for my usage and manages my database application clusters in a fantastic manner. Its dashboard is transparent and insightful so its also easy to evaluate our application deployments.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The best thing about SingleStore DB is it ensures the high availability of our database clusters which are established as Amazon RDS clusters in our organization. It also allows me to automate a lot of processes in our cluster, which will allow us to obtain notifications in case if there are high computational resource requirements for our cluster. The failover condition is effectively handled by SingleStore DB thanks to its data replication strategies, in which cluster availability is ensured by replicating our Amazon RDS servers. Data locking feature is also convenient while working with a distributed cluster as updation and deletion of nodes occur in real-time and SingleStore DB ensures to visualize the changes in real-time on its intuitive dashboard.
Easy and Fast Relational DB
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to Implement
Fast
Great support with Vendor
Installation Easy
Great table features
What do you dislike about the product?
Scaling features can be improved
Monitoring
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Adding more logging features and easier scalability
Introducing more queries
