Daedaelus

Logically Instantaneous: Time, Causality, and Databases


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"Logically-Instantaneous," critiques conventional distributed systems and database architectures for relying on a flawed, Newtonian or Minkowskian concept of time, arguing that timestamps are unsafe and lead to data corruption, particularly due to issues like write skew and indefinite causality. The author responds to proposals for hierarchical and logarithmic time bands, like those suggested by Pat Helland, asserting that stitching together snapshots tied to an inconsistent notion of spacetime is a major unsolved engineering problem. Instead, the document outlines a vision for the Daedaelus Solution, which leverages a hierarchical service arrangement forming an implicit clock and a bidirectionally coherent network link to achieve logical synchrony and atomic operations without relying on precise clock synchronization. The core challenge discussed is the difficulty of ensuring consistency and serializability in systems that must account for the physical realities of time, such as relativity and quantum mechanics, which defy the assumed monotonic, irreversible flow.

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DaedaelusBy Steve Kompolt