Database Doctor
Writing on databases, performance, and engineering.
Cover
Reading time icon 4 min
Publish date
Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Share on X Share on Reddit

I am joining Floe

Dear readers. I am delighted to announce that I have joined the company Floe.

Floe will be building a disaggregated query optimiser, a new execution engine and a caching layer that will make Iceberg suck less in the cloud. It ties in perfectly with my vision and my deep interest in query optimisation. We believe that it is possible, with some clever engineering, to run ad-hoc queries directly on top of your lakehouse.

And we got the team to pull it off!

What will I do at Floe?

My role will be as an advisor and spec writer. Since we are building a query optimiser – my knowledge in that area will come in handy. I will do some PM work and generally help the organisation wherever I am needed.

Of course, I will also be getting my hands dirty, testing and stressing the new Floe database. True to my reputation - I will be the nuisance that wants things to be just right.

I am currently working on some projects in Floe that I will soon blog about:

Floe has given me ample time to blog about everything I learn and how we design it.

Here is our blog:

The Database Doctor Blog

This blog is not going anywhere! In fact, I will probably be blogging a lot more in the future.

There are a few things I am working on in my spare time:

The TPC-H series

We are up to Query 10. There are 22 queries to talk about – and there is still more I have to teach you about query optimisers.

The Minimalist, OCD blog project

The blog you are viewing right now is statically generated HTML (that's why it is so fast). On good days, I have thousands of users visiting. Hosting these visitors costs me around 5 USD/month. Everything I write here (and in the SQL Arena) is managed by pushing md files to GitHub.

Right now, I am sitting in JetBrains with an MD file open called joining-floe.md. When I push save and git push this blog goes out to you – perfectly formatted with HTML done the way it is supposed to be. No Tailwinds, no JavaScript (except the G4 Analytics snippet), no React, no <div> soup. Just a pure, raw, developer-friendly writing experience.

I encourage you to view the source of this site to see just how simple it all looks.

It occurred to me that what I learned building this might be of interest to other people who suffer OCD as I do.

Where did Factorio go?

I did not have time to keep my Factorio blueprints updated. Instead of keeping dead code around, I retired my blueprints from this site. One day (when Thomas retires from IT) I might open a dedicated Factory subdomain.

Factorio remains the best computer game ever made!

SQL Arena

The SQL Arena will continue. Floe has kindly allowed me to spend time developing this project.

I will cross-post my TPC-H analysis (in abbreviated form) on the SQL Arena. The Arena is also where I will blog about my upcoming development that will support DataBricks in the Arena.

Cloud databases, I am coming for you!

The Arena will be used by Floe alongside other databases to validate our query optimiser. We aim to build a kick-ass optimiser in the cloud. The Arena will help keep us honest!

The Floe Blog

My companions at Floe are already blogging: Floe Blog. We have some extraordinarily talented people working here, and the entire dev team has been given time to share their knowledge online.

I will soon be writing on the Floe blog too.

Follow us at Floe

Have a look at our intro video to see what we are building.

...Did I mention it has cats in it?