TigerBeetle: A High-Performance OLTP Database Prioritizing Safety and Speed
TigerBeetle is an Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) database built for double-entry accounting, emphasizing safety and speed. It leverages the Viewstamped Replication (VR) consensus protocol for Strong Serializable consistency. Unlike general-purpose databases, TigerBeetle only stores accounts and transfers, ideal for financial transactions and similar applications. For high-contention workloads, it funnels writes through a single core on the primary node, prioritizing scale-up over scale-out. Robust fault tolerance is a core design principle, with explicit models for various failures and mechanisms to prevent data loss even with single replica survival. A unique upgrade process uses multi-version binaries for seamless transitions. Jepsen testing revealed several bugs, primarily related to client handling and single-node failures, most of which were subsequently addressed by the TigerBeetle team.