Engineering
How online primary key changes work in CockroachDB
As of our 20.1 release, CockroachDB supports online primary key changes. This means that it is now possible to change the primary key of a table while performing read and write operations on the table. Online primary key changes make it easier to transition an application from being single-region to multi-region, or to iterate on the schema of an application with no down time. Let’s dive into the technical challenges behind this feature, and our approach to solving them. As part of the deep dive, let’s review how data is stored in CockroachDB, and how online schema changes work in CockroachDB.
Rohan Yadav
May 21, 2020
Product
Get started geo-partitioning data with our command-line CockroachDB demo
CockroachDB offers a number of powerful enterprise features, most notably those related to geo-partitioning tables. Geo-partitioning allows users to control where their data lives geographically, at the row-level. To make geo-partitioning easier for users to try out, we made some updates to cockroach demo that enable you to check out enterprise features without the need for a full deployment. Note that all of the features discussed in this blog will be available in CockroachDB version 19.2. When you run cockroach demo in a terminal, CockroachDB starts a temporary, in-memory cluster, and then opens a SQL shell to that cluster. The in-memory cluster persists only as long as the shell is open, and the data is lost once the shell is closed. cockroach demo also automatically acquires a temporary enterprise license for each demo session, so you can use enterprise CockroachDB features right now. After you install CockroachDB, no further set up is necessary. So let’s dive right into the new features available for use with cockroach demo!
Rohan Yadav
October 10, 2019