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WARNING

This is in the process of being packaged for "outside of twitter use". It is very rough as code is being pushed around. please forgive the mess.

WHAT IS THIS

This is a distributed graph database. we use it to store social graphs (who follows whom, who blocks whom) and secondary indices at twitter. it is much simpler than other graph databases such as neo4j. it scales horizontally and is designed for on-line, low-latency, high throughput environments such as web-sites.

SOME STATS

Twitter runs FlockDB on a large cluster of machines. There are "Flapp" middleware machines and MySQL backends. (In theory, there are pluggable back-ends.)

Our FlockDB cluster stores 13+ billion edges, sustains 20k writes/second at peak, 100k reads/second at peak.

HOW TO RUN TESTS

mysql> CREATE DATABASE edges_test; mysql> CREATE DATABASE flock_edges_test;

% ant test -DDB_USERNAME=fixme -DDB_PASSWORD=fixmetoo

HOW TO ACTUALLY USE

we have not yet pulled over the main file so it wont actually start a thrift service. so it can't yet be used. but once we do that, you start up the process, then run flocker.rb (our command line tool) to create some new graph configurations and you start manipulating data.

the ruby client (gem forthcoming) works like this:

nk = User.find_by_screen_name('nk')
robey = User.find_by_screen_name('robey')
john = User.find_by_screen_name('jkalucki')
ed = User.find_by_screen_name('asdf')

# insert some data:
Flock.add(nk.id, :follows, robey.id)
Flock.add(nk.id, :follows, john.id)
Flock.add(robey.id, :follows, nk.id)
Flock.add(ed.id, :follows, john.id)

# query some data:
Flock.contains(nk.id, :follows, robey.id) # => true
Flock.select(nk.id, :follows, nil) # => [john.id, robey.id] # mnemonic: "nick follows who?"
Flock.select(nil, :follows, john.id) # => [nk.id, ed.id] # mnemonic: "who follows john?"

# set algebra:
Flock.select(nil, :follows, robey.id).intersect(nil, :follows, john.id) # => [nk.id] # mnemonic who follows both robey and john?
# you can do `intersection`, `union`, and `difference` queries.
# this is all done "server-side" so as to avoid transmitting huge data.

# some hints for performance:
Flock.select(nk.id, :follows, nil).paginate(1000).each { ... } # => gather all results, 1000 items at a time

# pagination, 20 items per page:
nick_follows_who = Flock.select(nk.id, :follows, nil)
first_page, next_cursor, prev_cursor = nick_follows_who.paginate(20, :start).unapply
second_page, next_cursor, prev_cursor = nick_follows_who.paginate(20, next_cursor).unapply

# perform a "mass-action"
Flock.delete(nk.id, :follows, nil) # => have nick unfollow everybody

# edges have multiple "colors". we do this for spam:
Flock.archive(nk.id, :follows, nil) # => archive all edges emanating from nick
Flock.unarchive(nk.id, :follows, nil) # => unarchive all edges emanating from nick. this will restore all archived edges that WEREN'T deleted.

# perform a transaction/bulk-write:
Flock.transaction do |t|
  t.add(robey.id, :blocks, nk.id)
  t.delete(nk.id, :follows, robey.id)
  t.delete(nk.id, :follows_on_his_phone, robey.id)
  t.delete(robey.id, :follows, nick.id)
  t.delete(robey.id, :follows_on_his_phone, nick.id)
end

CONTRIBUTORS

  • Nick Kallen
  • Robey Pointer
  • John Kalucki
  • Ed Ceaser