Frameworks

Irmin: A Distributed Database and Version Control System for OCaml

Hazem Abbas

23 Apr 2023 — 2 min read

Photo by Brandon / Unsplash

Irmin is a customizable-distributed data system based on distributed version-control systems (DVCs). Like Git, Irmin allows for functions such as clone, push, pull, branch, and rebase. Users can store application-specific values and define custom storage layers. Irmin is designed to handle a high number of operations per second and automatically handle update conflicts. It also exposes an event-driven API for programmable dynamic behaviors and dataflow pipelines.

Irmin, created at the University of Cambridge in 2013, is a collection of libraries designed to solve challenges raised by the CAP Theorem for storage and orchestration of unikernel binaries and their data for MirageOS applications. It is not a complete database engine, but rather a combination of libraries that can be selected to solve each application's distributed problem.

In summary is a distributed database system that is very portable and can be used with many different types of storage, including in-memory databases, SSDs, hard drives, local storage, and Git file formats. It has a core of low-level data structures that define how data is saved and shared across nodes, as well as higher-level data structures that developers can use without understanding the specifics of how Irmin works. It also has algorithms for efficiently syncing its distributed low-level constructs, and some components even have formal semantics, such as Conflict-free Replicated Data-Types (CRDT).

Features

Built-in Snapshotting - backup and restore
Storage Agnostic - you can use Irmin on top of your own storage layer
Custom Datatypes - (de)serialization for custom data types, derivable via ppx_irmin
Highly Portable - runs anywhere from Linux to web browsers and Xen unikernels
Git Compatibility - irmin-git uses an on-disk format that can be inspected and modified using Git
Dynamic Behavior - allows the users to define custom merge functions, use in-memory transactions (to keep track of reads as well as writes) and to define event-driven workflows using a notification mechanism

License

ISC license: A permissive license lets people do anything with your code with proper attribution and without warranty. The ISC license is functionally equivalent to the BSD 2-Clause and MIT licenses, removing some language that is no longer necessary.

Permissions

Commercial Use
Distribution
Modification Private use

Limitations

No Liability
No Warranty

Conditions

License and copyright notice

Resources

Source code

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