Blog
Orders & Inventory Management
Retail & Ecommerce
How to build an inventory management system that scales (with reference architecture)
One of the biggest technical challenges of inventory management is keeping data consistent in real time, or as close to it as possible. Particularly with larger operations, this is vital to avoid “overselling” scenarios that can cost the company money or damage its reputation.
Jeffrey White
February 3, 2025
Engineering
Database schema: SQL schema examples and best practices
In the context of a database and how it’s organized, the term database schema describes the structure of the data and how the elements within the database relate to each other. This information is often presented visually with diagrams that illustrate how different tables and elements connect and to give you a logical view of the entire database. However, the schema itself exists in the database as the coded rules that define the data’s structure and relationships.
Charlie Custer
January 27, 2025
Scale & Resilience
Database Modernization
Mainframe to Distributed SQL, Part 5: Transitioning to a Distributed Architecture
As businesses increasingly demand scalability, resilience, and flexibility, transitioning from traditional centralized systems to distributed architectures has become a critical strategic move.
Amine El Kouhen
January 23, 2025
Banking & Fintech
Always On at Nexo: Assuring Resilience and Scale with CockroachDB
When crypto prices rise, the fortunes of this dynamic sector’s service providers also increase. However, industry upswings have a hazard: Rapid growth can mean outgrowing your database.
David Weiss
January 22, 2025
Software & Tech
Reference Architecture
Managing the digital keys to the kingdom: how to achieve control over your IAM data
For many organizations, identity access management (IAM) systems are like the digital keys to the kingdom and the foundation for their day-to-day operations. Building and maintaining an IAM system can be extremely complex if you aren’t using the right infrastructure to support your business needs. In a previous post, we examined why IAM is critical to businesses, the challenges associated with building an IAM system, and compared a centralized vs. distributed system. Here we will discuss how you can achieve granular control over your IAM data in a distributed environment.
Cassie McAllister
January 21, 2025
Product
Why Fortune 50 banks are leaving traditional RDBMS for CockroachDB
In the world of finance, changing databases is usually pretty rare. When you’re in charge of other people’s money — several trillion dollars of it, in the case of one of the banks discussed in this article — even small changes could represent major risks. That’s why even today, many banks still run systems based on legacy relational databases such as Oracle, IBM, and PostgreSQL — often the same databases they were using 10 or even 20 years ago.
Cassie McAllister
January 16, 2025
Scale & Resilience
Guides
Database Modernization
Big Ideas for 2025: What is “data modernization” today?
Data modernization has been a critical aspect of technological evolution throughout recent history – it has simply taken on different forms based on the economic, business, and societal needs at the time. In a recent episode of Big Ideas in App Architecture, two expert Cockroach Labs sales engineers – David Joy and Jim Hatcher – discussed data modernization’s intriguing evolution, highlighting key shifts and trends that are unfolding.
Becca Weng
January 14, 2025
Scale & Resilience
Preparing for the “New Normal”: How to Minimize the Impact of IT Outages
High-profile outages and performance constraints underscore the acute need for systems capable of adapting to the modern world. Take the recent Crowdstrike outage, which affected various industries, including finance, healthcare, and notably aviation: Thousands of flights were cancelled, and many hospitals worldwide had to cancel non-emergency procedures as they were unable to access patient data.
Becca Weng
January 13, 2025
Software & Tech
Reference Architecture
Building a real-world IAM system: centralized vs. distributed
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been locked out of your banking app, a hotel room, your work computer, your car, your Gmail… the list goes on. You know the reason your access was blocked was because you either forgot your keys/password or had the incorrect login credentials. Businesses of every kind implement identity and access management (IAM) systems for your protection, and their own. Failure to protect humans and resources can easily result in devastating consequences.
Cassie McAllister
January 8, 2025