DBOS

DBOS (Database-Oriented Operating System) is a <a href="/facts/Database/VYcpkevb">database</a>-oriented <a href="/facts/Operating_system/8XTuvMh2">operating system</a> meant to simplify and improve the <a href="/facts/Scalability/jh7JomPa">scalability</a>, security and resilience of large-scale distributed applications. It started in 2020 as a joint <a href="/facts/Open_source/7X9rCdz4">open source</a> project with <a href="/facts/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology/Xk49vNA8">MIT</a>, <a href="/facts/Stanford_University/JEQeF9z2">Stanford</a> and <a href="/facts/Carnegie_Mellon_University/XKd7L2KA">Carnegie Mellon University</a>, after a brainstorm between <a href="/facts/Michael_Stonebraker/XevuvaKt">Michael Stonebraker</a> and <a href="/facts/Matei_Zaharia/hy5ndF8r">Matei Zaharia</a> on how to scale and improve scheduling and performance of millions of <a href="/facts/Apache_Spark/rHQVfSBc">Apache Spark</a> tasks.
The basic idea is to run a multi-node multi-core, <a href="/facts/Database_transaction/q1Etrsl8">transactional</a>, highly-<a href="/facts/Availability/l8SGSyyf">available</a> distributed database, such as <a href="/facts/VoltDB/JRz68XXT">VoltDB</a>, as the only application for a <a href="/facts/Microkernel/wsaWtYCU">microkernel</a>, and then to implement scheduling, messaging, <a href="/facts/File_system/FdPm90uc">file systems</a> and other operating system services on top of the database.

The architectural philosophy is described by this quote from the abstract of their initial preprint: <blockquote>All operating system state should be represented uniformly as database tables, and operations on this state should be made via queries from otherwise stateless tasks. This design makes it easy to scale and evolve the OS without whole-system refactoring, inspect and debug system state, upgrade components without downtime, manage decisions using machine learning, and implement sophisticated security features.</blockquote><a href="/facts/Michael_Stonebraker/XevuvaKt">Stonebraker</a> claims a variety of security benefits, from a "smaller, less porous attack surface", to the ability to log and analyze how the system state changes in real-time due to the transactional nature of the OS. Recovery from a severe bug or an attack can be as simple as <a href="/facts/Rollback_(data_management)/HNtToVYw">rolling back</a> the database to a previous state. And since the database is already distributed, the complexity of <a href="/facts/Orchestration_(computing)/0kM890C9">orchestration</a> systems like <a href="/facts/Kubernetes/CI61Msu0">Kubernetes</a> can be avoided.
A prototype was built with competitive performance to existing systems.

DBOS open-in-new

DBOS