Show HN: ToplingDB - A Persistent Key-Value Store for External Storage
18 comments
·July 1, 2025esafak
A distributed KV-store plus a relational layer makes it a competitor to NewSQL databases like TiDB, which is also based on Facebook's RocksDB.
It doesn't look like it's very actively developed: https://github.com/topling/toplingdb/pulse/monthly
To the OP who's developing it: I suggest polishing your README. Provide a simple installation tutorial, maybe a trial offering like tidbcloud.com, and comparative benchmark results, since you advertise your performance.
jauntywundrkind
It's quite active. They just aren't using GitHub pull requests in their workflow, which is what GitHub Pulse measures. https://github.com/topling/toplingdb/commits/memtable_as_log...
dangoodmanUT
Without better (english) docs it will be hard to get adoption, unfortunately. 8x perf gain over rocksdb is... a lot... unless you're poking at particularly bad metrics.
ozgrakkurt
Would be really interesting to have faster compilation and more simplicity (auto tuning parameters etc.) compared to rocksdb. In my experience rocksdb performance is very good and it is reliable but it is a pain to integrate into the build process and has too many configurations
absoluteunit1
For the laymen folks reading this - what are the ideal use cases for this?
nbf_1995
Like RocksDB from which this appears to be forked, the primary usage is as a storage engine for other applications/databases. Compared to rocksdb, it seems like ToplingDB has added more facilities to better support distributed use-cases.
Some databases that utilize RocksDB for their storage engine: https://kvrocks.apache.org/ - Redis/ValKey compatible distributed database with disk persistence via RockDB. https://github.com/pingcap/tidb - MySQL compatible distributed database. Mentioned elsewhere in this thread. https://github.com/tikv/tikv - Distributed, transactional, key value store. Originally by the same company as TiDB.
In theory you could use it as an in-process KV store similar to how SQLite provides an in process sql database, but the api is far from ergonomic for that use case.
alexpadula
Very extensive, great work on TerarkDB and Topling!
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andybak
This is failing my "Can I figure out what the hell it is in 60 seconds?" test.
Sometimes that means I'm just not the target market. I do do web dev (among other things) so that doesn't seem to be the case at first glance?
faizshah
It’s RocksDB but faster because data can be searched while still compressed allowing you to load more records in less cache/ram leading to up to 10x performance of RocksDB. It adds an embedded http control plane as well as supporting other extensions like MyRocks (MySQL) and Todis (redis compatibility).
Or at least thats what I got from it correct me if I am wrong rockeet.
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ChocolateGod
I'm confused what makes this cloud native?
faizshah
From what I gather it has an embedded http control plane, yaml/json config for plugins, prometheus integration, and distributed compaction workers on separate, potentially serverless, hosts.
dboreham
It has an embedded http server?
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alex7o
What does it have to do with external storage in this context, does it mean S3. Initially I thought it is a db for thumb drives?
As the creator of TerarkDB (acquired by ByteDance in 2019), I have developed ToplingDB in recent years.
ToplingDB is forked from RocksDB, where we have replaced almost all components with more efficient alternatives(db_bench shows ToplingDB is about ~8x faster than RocksDB):
* MemTable: SkipList is replaced by CSPP(Crash Safe Parallel Patricia trie), which is 8x faster.
* SST: BlockBasedTable is replaced by ToplingZipTable, implemented by searchable compression algo, it is very small and fast, typically less than 1μs per lookup:
Other hotspots are also improved:* Flush MemTable to L0 is omited, greatly reducing write amp and is very friendly for large(GB) MemTable
* Prefix cache for searching candidate SSTs and prefix cache for scanning by iterators * Distributed compaction(superior replacement to rocksdb remote compaction) Useful Bonus Feature:* Config by json/yaml: can config almost all features
* Optional embeded WebView: show db structures in web browser, refreshing pages like animation
* Online update db configs by http
MySQL integration, ToplingDB has integrated into MySQL by MyTopling, which is forked from MyRocks with great improvements, like improvements of ToplingDB on RocksDB:
* WBWI(WriteBatchWithIndex): like MemTable, SkipList is replace with CSPP, 20x faster(speedup is more than MemTable).
* LockManager & LockTracker: 10x faster
* Encoding & Decoding: 5x faster
* Others ....
MyRocks has many disadvantages compared to InnoDB, while MyTopling outperforms InnoDB at almost all aspect - excluding feature differences.
We have create ~100 PRs for RocksDB, in which ~40 were accepted. Our PRs are mostly "small" changes, since big changes are not likely accepted.
ToplingDB has been deployed in numerous production environments.
Welcome every one using ToplingDB & MyTopling, and discuss in https://github.com/topling/toplingdb/discussions