The Data Stack Show - The PRQL: Bringing Innovation to the Lowest Level of Databases

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

In this bonus episode, Eric and Kostas preview their upcoming conversation with Stavros Papadopoulos of TileDB, Inc.

Welcome to the Data Sack Show prequel, where we chat about the show that we just recorded to give you a sneak preview. Costas, databases have come up so much recently. We talked about it in a recent Shop Talk episode. We've had different technologies really throughout the life of the show. We just recorded a fascinating show with Stravos from TileDB. And one of the interesting things about TileDB is that they really focused on solving certain problems at the storage level, which is really interesting. Interesting. So moving further down the technology stack as it relates to databases, as opposed to taking an established database paradigm and building on top of it to accomplish

something like streaming queries or something like that. What's your take on that? Do you think that's... Is that necessary? Is that novel? Yeah, it is. I mean... And the prequel. Well, okay. What is super interesting with Stavros and DialPB

is that he and his team like worked on a part of the database system that tend not to hear that much about it there are like

some technologies out there parquet or org file format right so

people are like considering it as let's say like a solved problem or there's more important problems to be solved on top of that, right? But I think what we see here is that like every layer of a database system and like

any software system in general, it's also like database. There's always space there for like innovation and coming up with improvements that are important, at least for some of the use cases, right? Like we will hear from Stavros about how like this storage format is used a lot around like genetics and stuff like that. It's a very natural, let's say, way of storing the data. Although it's not just that, like it is, as he will describe it, like a parkeion steroids. So it's not just like for genetics and like these kind of use cases and this type of data, you can use it for other things too. Yep. So yeah, let's start with him.

I think it's like a unique opportunity to learn about something very fundamental and very important about working with data, which is the storage itself of the data. And understand like what makes a good file formats or analytics, right? So let's do that. Let's talk with him. David Pérez- Let's do it. And the bonus teaser is that we got some really good insights on being a first-time founder and the way that he's approached

leading a company coming out of academia, which I found really interesting and helpful. So for all the entrepreneurs out there, definitely tune in if you want those nuggets of wisdom as well. You'll definitely want to tune into this show. We learned a ton about the foundational principles of databases and also some good stuff about being an entrepreneur. Subscribe if you haven't, and we'll catch you on the next one.