BUILD
In-house Development
Alopex DB v0.8.8 Tutorial, Part 3: CASE, Set Operations, CTEs, and Window Functions
Use CASE expressions, UNION and other set operations, common table expressions, rankings, and running totals in Alopex DB.
Posts tagged#SQL
View
BUILD
In-house Development
Alopex DB v0.8.8 Tutorial, Part 2: Querying Articles with SQL
Create a table and query it with SELECT, JOIN, aggregation, and subqueries, then combine SQL and key-value data in one transaction.
BUILD
In-house Development
What Is the Best Database for a Startup? — A Stage-by-Stage Use-Case Analysis and the 'Scaling Cliff'
An analysis of how database requirements change across the MVP, PMF, growth, and scale stages, comparing the trade-offs of SQLite, Postgres, managed databases, and dedicated vector stores — and where Alopex DB's 'erase the migration cliff' approach fits.
ENG
Engineering
Consensus Algorithms, Underground (Part 2) — The Crash Failure Family: Paxos and Raft
The family of algorithms for the crash failure model, where nodes stop but do not lie. From the single tool Paxos relies on — quorum intersection — through Raft's decomposition, EPaxos, Multi-Raft, and the parts outside the papers: persistence ordering and linearizable reads, with minimal code. Part 2 of a 4-part series.
BUILD
In-house Development
Even So, I'm Building Alopex DB
SQLite, DuckDB, PostgreSQL, distributed DBs, vector DBs, graph DBs — there is no shortage of great products. I'm building a new database anyway because every time the project moves forward, I re-pick the DB and rebuild the data itself. Alopex DB aims to be a foundation that keeps data's volume, conversion time, regeneration cost, and provenance intact as you scale from local to cloud, from single node to distributed.
DEV
Dev Notes
Rust Is Not a Silver Bullet — Language Parsers Belong in Nim or Roc
The myth that 'Rust can do anything' collapses the moment you try to scale a recursive AST. For SQL parsers — massive tagged unions, deep recursion — Rust's type system breaks down in both compile time and maintainability. A 3-language benchmark porting the same parser to Nim and Roc shows exactly why Rust is structurally the wrong tool, with runnable code.
DEV
Dev Notes
Getting Started with Roc: A Pure Functional Language Meant to Ride Alongside Rust
A technical look at Roc — Richard Feldman's pure functional language. Covering the alpha4-rolling status, Perceus reference counting, the Platform/Host model, and the Zig compiler rewrite, informed by AlopexDB's SQL parser trial.
DEV
Dev Notes
Getting Started with Nim: A Multi-Paradigm Language That Transpiles to C
A technical overview of Nim in 2026 — the stable 2.2 series, the upcoming 3.0 (Nimony) compiler rewrite, ORC memory management, C ABI interop, and its real-world performance as an SQL parser candidate for AlopexDB.
BUILDBUILDBUILDENGBUILDDEVDEVDEV
Alopex DB v0.8.8 Tutorial, Part 3: CASE, Set Operations, CTEs, and Window Functions
Use CASE expressions, UNION and other set operations, common table expressions, rankings, and running totals in Alopex DB.
Alopex DB v0.8.8 Tutorial, Part 2: Querying Articles with SQL
Create a table and query it with SELECT, JOIN, aggregation, and subqueries, then combine SQL and key-value data in one transaction.
What Is the Best Database for a Startup? — A Stage-by-Stage Use-Case Analysis and the 'Scaling Cliff'
An analysis of how database requirements change across the MVP, PMF, growth, and scale stages, comparing the trade-offs of SQLite, Postgres, managed databases, and dedicated vector stores — and where Alopex DB's 'erase the migration cliff' approach fits.
Consensus Algorithms, Underground (Part 2) — The Crash Failure Family: Paxos and Raft
The family of algorithms for the crash failure model, where nodes stop but do not lie. From the single tool Paxos relies on — quorum intersection — through Raft's decomposition, EPaxos, Multi-Raft, and the parts outside the papers: persistence ordering and linearizable reads, with minimal code. Part 2 of a 4-part series.
Even So, I'm Building Alopex DB
SQLite, DuckDB, PostgreSQL, distributed DBs, vector DBs, graph DBs — there is no shortage of great products. I'm building a new database anyway because every time the project moves forward, I re-pick the DB and rebuild the data itself. Alopex DB aims to be a foundation that keeps data's volume, conversion time, regeneration cost, and provenance intact as you scale from local to cloud, from single node to distributed.
Rust Is Not a Silver Bullet — Language Parsers Belong in Nim or Roc
The myth that 'Rust can do anything' collapses the moment you try to scale a recursive AST. For SQL parsers — massive tagged unions, deep recursion — Rust's type system breaks down in both compile time and maintainability. A 3-language benchmark porting the same parser to Nim and Roc shows exactly why Rust is structurally the wrong tool, with runnable code.
Getting Started with Roc: A Pure Functional Language Meant to Ride Alongside Rust
A technical look at Roc — Richard Feldman's pure functional language. Covering the alpha4-rolling status, Perceus reference counting, the Platform/Host model, and the Zig compiler rewrite, informed by AlopexDB's SQL parser trial.
Getting Started with Nim: A Multi-Paradigm Language That Transpiles to C
A technical overview of Nim in 2026 — the stable 2.2 series, the upcoming 3.0 (Nimony) compiler rewrite, ORC memory management, C ABI interop, and its real-world performance as an SQL parser candidate for AlopexDB.