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ScaleDB

discontinued

by ScaleDB Inc. · since 2008 · also known as ScaleDB storage engine, ScaleDB for MySQL

Shared-disk clustering storage engine for MySQL that later pivoted to time-series; company folded around 2017.

relationaltime-seriesdatabase engineproprietarylegacy
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discontinued. The company ceased operations around 2017 and ScaleDB is no longer offered. For scale-out MySQL use Vitess, TiDB or Galera; for time-series use ClickHouse or TimescaleDB.

Overview

ScaleDB was a startup that plugged a clustered storage engine into MySQL (and later MariaDB). Its first product used a shared-disk design in the spirit of Oracle RAC: many MySQL nodes ran against a common, highly available storage and caching tier, so applications could add database nodes without sharding or replica promotion. Around 2015 the company repositioned the engine for high-velocity time-series and IoT data, pushing queries down to parallel storage nodes while keeping MariaDB as the SQL front end. The company wound down around 2017 and the product is no longer available.

Transactional apps (OLTP)Time-series dataIoT & telemetry

Strengths & trade-offs

Strengths

  • +Scaled MySQL out without application-level sharding
  • +Shared-disk design avoided replica promotion on node failure
  • +Kept full MySQL/MariaDB compatibility for tools and drivers

Trade-offs

  • −Vendor is defunct; no downloads, fixes or support
  • −Shared-disk clusters depend on a fast, highly available storage tier

Great for

  • +History of shared-disk clustering for MySQL
  • +Migrating legacy ScaleDB deployments

Think twice for

  • −Any new deployment

Capabilities

Native or official first-party support · 5 of 25 tracked

✓Transactions
✓Joins
✓Secondary indexes
✓Durable persistence
✓Streaming ingest
–Full-text search
–Vector search
–Geospatial
–JSON
–Change data capture
–Triggers
–Stored procedures
–Materialized views
–TTL / expiry
–Pub/Sub
–Columnar storage
–In-memory
–Compression
–Encryption at rest
–Role-based access
–Time travel
–Branching
–Online schema changes
–Offline sync
–Runs in WebAssembly

Scale & consistency

Comfortable data size
Medium · ≤ 10 TB
Horizontal scaling
Native
Multi-region
No
Transactions
Full ACID
Consistency
Strong
Schema
Strict
Architecture
Shared storage, Distributed
Query languages
SQL (MySQL dialect)

Added MySQL nodes against shared storage without sharding; later versions parallelised time-series queries across storage nodes.

Deployment

Self-hosted Vendor-managed cloud Serverless Embedded Edge Kubernetes operator

Ecosystem

compatible withMySQL
apis & protocolsMySQL wire protocol

Alternatives to ScaleDB

Compare all→
VitessRelational21.2

CNCF-graduated sharding and clustering layer that makes a fleet of MySQL servers look like one database.

scaledb vs vitess →
TiDBRelational35.9

MySQL-compatible distributed SQL with a row store for OLTP and a columnar replica for real-time analytics.

scaledb vs tidb →
Galera ClusterRelational10.0

Synchronous multi-primary replication for MySQL and MariaDB, now owned by MariaDB plc.

scaledb vs galera-cluster →
MySQL NDB ClusterRelational11.4

Shared-nothing, auto-sharded in-memory MySQL engine built for telecom-grade availability.

scaledb vs mysql-ndb-cluster →
ClickHouseColumnar / OLAP69.8

Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows.

scaledb vs clickhouse →
TimescaleDBTime-Series47.1

PostgreSQL extension adding hypertables, columnar compression and continuous aggregates for time series.

scaledb vs timescaledb →

ScaleDB FAQ

What is ScaleDB?

ScaleDB is a relational database by ScaleDB Inc., first released in 2008. ScaleDB was a startup that plugged a clustered storage engine into MySQL (and later MariaDB). Its first product used a shared-disk design in the spirit of Oracle RAC: many MySQL nodes ran against a common, highly available storage and caching tier, so applications could add database nodes without sharding or replica promotion. Around 2015 the company repositioned the engine for high-velocity time-series and IoT data, pushing queries down to parallel storage nodes while keeping MariaDB as the SQL front end. The company wound down around 2017 and the product is no longer available.

Is ScaleDB open source?

No. ScaleDB is proprietary, closed-source software.

Does ScaleDB support ACID transactions?

Yes. ScaleDB supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.

Does ScaleDB scale horizontally?

ScaleDB scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at medium scale (≤ 10 TB).

How can I run ScaleDB?

You can self-host it.

What is ScaleDB best for?

ScaleDB is a strong fit for history of shared-disk clustering for MySQL and migrating legacy ScaleDB deployments. Think twice for any new deployment.

What are the best alternatives to ScaleDB?

Common alternatives to ScaleDB include Vitess, TiDB, Galera Cluster, MySQL NDB Cluster and ClickHouse. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.

Is ScaleDB still maintained?

ScaleDB is discontinued. The company ceased operations around 2017 and ScaleDB is no longer offered. For scale-out MySQL use Vitess, TiDB or Galera; for time-series use ClickHouse or TimescaleDB.

How popular is ScaleDB?

ScaleDB has little measurable public adoption today, so it ranks near the bottom of the WhichDB Score.