Speaker:

Jeremy Taylor

Date:

Mon Nov 24, 2025 @ 04:30pm EST

Date:

Mon Nov 24, 2025

Time:

04:30pm EST

Location:

https://cmu.zoom.us/j/96274590594?pwd=ZIhPZi8CFwaVd5kN9sS5uEiuWanTCa.1Zoom

Title:

Reconstructing History with XTDB

System:

XTDB

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Talk Info:

XTDB is a SQL database that challenges long held assumptions about how data mutates in databases. Instead of UPDATEs and DELETEs destroying information, or forcing developers to implement archival strategies, XTDB preserves history automatically without leaving such decisions to developers. Additionally XTDB implements a variation of the SQL:2011 syntax to simplify time-travel queries across two dimensions of time: system-time (what developers usually think about) and valid-time (what business users care about the most). XTDB is built around Apache Arrow and offers a FlightSQL interface in addition to Postgres wire protocol compatibility. This seminar talk will walk through the design constraints and internal architecture, which have been heavily inspired by Datomic (released in 2012) and 'big data' systems.

This talk is part of the Future Data Systems Seminar Series.

Bio:

Jeremy Taylor is Head of Product for XTDB, an open source database created to simplify how developers manage bitemporal data and dynamic systems. He developed XTDB in 2019 alongside a team of Lisp hackers at JUXT, a company built around a passion for Clojure (a functional Lisp for the JVM) and a focus on Investment Banking. He previously worked on eCommerce systems with IBM and holds a computer engineering degree.