Philip O'Toole
philipotoole.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2014
Philip O'Toole, creator of rqlite, writes about distributed SQLite, Go, software development practice, and open-source economics.
What HN saysHN links it for the rqlite post on replicating SQLite with Raft; a commenter calls building a distributed database on SQLite nontrivial.
28HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
135stories submitted
1.7Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1Replicating SQLite using Raft Consensus5 people · 102 points · first shared 2015 · 21 comments on HN
- 2Be a conviction engineer4 people · 18 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 3My development team costs $41.73 a month3 people · 69 points · first shared 2025 · 39 comments on HN
- 4Building a highly-available search engine using SQLite3 people · 12 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 5Software development: it’s got nothing to do with computers3 people · 8 points · first shared 2015 · 2 comments on HN
- 6How rqlite is tested2 people · 252 points · first shared 2025 · 52 comments on HN
- 7The strange economics of open-source software2 people · 139 points · first shared 2015 · 90 comments on HN
- 8400 days of Go2 people · 137 points · first shared 2015 · 110 comments on HN
- 97 Years of Open-Source Database Development: Lessons Learned2 people · 48 points · first shared 2021 · 5 comments on HN
- 10Coding like it's 1999 (2015)2 people · 13 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 11Rqlite 8.17.0 and 8.18.0: Scheduled Vacuums and Enhanced JSON Support2 people · 9 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 12Why Slack Isn't Working2 people · 9 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 13Lessons for new software development managers2 people · 9 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 14Rqlite 8.02 people · 6 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 159 Years of Open-Source Database Development2 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
otoolep · 2026-07-09
Blog post author here (I did not post the link above to HN). I also wrote a short follow-up blog post at https://philipotoole.com/proving-to-fable-i-maintain-the-repo/
avinassh · 2021-05-27
I love reading about articles on Databases, especially about their internal workings. Some of the blogs I follow:
1. Oren Eini - Creator and CTO of Raven DB - https://ayende.com/blog
2. Tyler Neely - Creator of Sled DB - https://medium.com/@tylerneely
3. Philip O'Toole - Creator of rqlite - https://www.philipotoole.com/
4. Martin Kleppmann - Author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications - https://martin.kleppmann.com/archive.html
5. Glauber Costa - worked on glommio, scylla DB - https://glaubercosta-11125.medium.com/
Do recommend me if you know more!
keeda · 2025-08-22
Building a robust, performant distributed database on top of a standalone database is not at all trivial. Sure, you could boil it down to "consensus algorithm + DB" but there are countless edge cases. I am not very familiar with this project, but it seems pretty well-tested: https://philipotoole.com/how-is-rqlite-tested/
And you can look at the code here: https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite
Does seem a wee bit more complicated than a CRUD PHP service.
avmich · 2016-12-16
Can rqlite [1] be helpful here?
[1] http://www.philipotoole.com/replicating-sqlite-using-raft-consensus/