CockroachDB update aims to ease creation of data-intensive applications

SQL database maker Cockroach Labs, which specializes in handling high-transactional, data-intensive, cloud-based services, today announced a new version of its front-line product, CockroachDB 22.1. The new edition is designed to enable app updates across an entire development lifecycle, allowing developers to build scalable applications ostensibly with less effort, the company said.

Using CockroachDB 22.1 and its automation features, engineering teams can now prototype faster, automate more operations and maintain peak performance during massive transaction spikes with a single platform, from start to scale, Chief Product Officer Nate Stewart said in a media advisory.

“From prototype to production, from production to massive scale, building with CockroachDB 22.1 means the database you use to get off the ground is the same one you’ll use as your application and customer base diversifies and grows,” Stewart said. 

Chief among the new features are: 

• New command-line tool (CLI) so users can manage and scale their cluster with code 
• Integrations with the popular tools Prisma and Google Pub/Sub
• Support for time-to-live (TTL), which lets developers set a lifespan for row-level data
• Super regions address data domiciling regulations for multi-regional and multi-national businesses
• Quality of service (QoS) lets users maintain high performance while handling millions of transactions per second
• Admission control and hot spot detection improve performance during high-transaction periods
• Automate deployment and scaling with a new administrative API
• Optimize performance with index recommendations and insights into transaction contention

The continued growth of the cloud database market during the past dozen years reflects a foundational shift as enterprises transition to a cloud-first IT philosophy and increasingly turn to cloud databases for both new initiatives and to modernize existing systems. However, managing and scaling transactional data has remained a largely manual task and brings with it significant operational headaches, Stewart said. 

Cockroach Labs was recently included in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for cloud database management systems for the first time. “This product reflects the maturity of CockroachDB as a cloud database management system (DBMS) for transactional workloads, and the increasing interest in distributed transactional databases in the market,” the researcher said.

According to Gartner Research, Cockroach’s main competitors are:

• Oracle Database
• DataStax Enterprise
• Redis Enterprise Cloud
• Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub
• IBM Db2
• Couchbase Server
• Databricks Lakehouse Platform
• Vertica Analytics Platform (HP) 

CockroachDB 22.1 is available now.