DataStax still claimed these properties while the bugs were live. It's important they fixed them quickly, but the point still stands—the point of the entire series, I think—that database companies very frequently make big claims that few people go through the process of checking... even at the companies themselves.
Seriously, I've seen plenty of bugs found in database transaction mechanisms, and I've never seen a database pull claims of, "transactional integrity". I can't even imagine that getting through the product team in a couple of days.
If you distinguish between those two, and implementation doesn't match design, then you must concede you have a level of incompetence in your development chain.
When dealing with data, you don't get any points for "well, we meant to do it the right way, but it didn't happen. sorry."
I guess I'll have to settle for joining the crowd of incompetents behind PostgreSQL, Linux, the JVM, et al., who have also been known to release bug fixes on occasion. :)
I guess I'm just quite surprised Aphyr turned that one up. I didn't look at the fix, but it's a pretty severe bug if it completely, silently disables a feature.
You mean companies sometimes promote features that still have bugs ? My god that is incredible. I can't believe that has never happened before. Oh wait it has. On nearly every single software project in the history of software projects.
His test amounts to inserting integers without even simulating a network partition. This is about the most basic test of the purported functionality you could come up with, not a fencepost error or some cosmetic problem. This is advertising a fundamental property of your software and not even doing the most minimal checking that it is true.
Databases are and must be held to a higher standard than the software sitting above them in the stack, just as kernels must be held to an even higher standard, because bugs in lower layers cause more damage with higher costs. DBAs and commercial databases are expensive because data is valuable and there are liabilities. If the database developer made a remark like yours, I would run in the opposite direction. A smug reply like that exposes a fundamental disrespect for other people's data--their property. If one has no respect for our property, one shouldn't find it surprising that we have no respect for one's software or services.
I note and appreciate that the Cassandra developer's reply below is even-handed and serious.
