So, you found this cool, new database with all the version control features of Git. It's got a funny name, Dolt. It looks like it fits your use case.

Maybe you have machine learning data and Dolt would make an ideal feature store. Maybe you are building a game and the configuration is getting messy in Git. Or maybe you want to add branches to your database to handle all your new AI agents. Whatever your use case, Dolt looks like the right choice to you.

But you are not alone in this world. You have other stakeholders at your company you need to convince, be that a Database Administrator (DBA), a senior architect, or maybe even your manager. This article walks through some common objections we hear and provides our retort. You got this!

Dolt is Here to Stay

Adopting new software is risky. How do we know this company will be around in five years?

Dolt, the company behind Dolt, is well capitalized having raised over $23M in venture funding. DoltHub has been a company for almost seven years. Adoption and revenue growth have been robust for the past 15 months or so. Obviously, there are no guarantees but the version controlled SQL database seems here to stay.

Dolt is Open Source

OK. But what if DoltHub does fail?

Dolt is free and open source. Dolt is Apache 2.0 licensed. So, in the worst case, you can maintain and even sell your own fork.

Dolt is Mature

Why would I want to run a brand new database? Think of the bugs.

Dolt may seem new because it is such an innovative idea. But Dolt is not that new. Dolt has been 1.0 for over 2 years. Many companies you know run it in production.

We're so confident in Dolt's reliability that if you do find a correctness bug, we'll fix yours in 24 hours or less. We get so few bugs that this promise is manageable for our team.

Dolt is Fast

I bet you Dolt is slow.

Dolt was slow in the past but we've worked tirelessly over the past 5 years to bring latency to almost parity with MySQL. Dolt is only 10% slower than MySQL on a standard suite of sysbench latency benchmarks. This latency difference is unnoticeable to most users.

Dolt will Scale

Version control on data sounds like it only works in toy use cases.

Dolt scales to millions of versions, branches, and rows. Dolt is built on top of a novel, unique storage engine designed for querying and version control at scale. Dolt leverages a novel data structure called a Prolly Tree combined with a Git-style commit graph to achieve scale. Dolt is built on exciting computer science and engineering.

If you want to test it yourself, we have a partially imported version of Wikipedia to play with that is over 1TB. Our customers run this scale in production with thousands of branches.

Dolt is MySQL or Postgres-Compatible

We only run Postgres here.

Dolt is MySQL-compatible. We recently shipped a Postgres-compatible version of Dolt called Doltgres. Both flavors work but Dolt is older and more reliable. Doltgres is still Beta.

There is no MySQL or Postgres code in Dolt or Doltgres. Dolt is built from the ground up. So, the only difference between Dolt and Doltgres is the client you connect to it with and the flavor of SQL it supports. At their core, both Dolt and Doltgres have the same engine. As we improve one, the other improves as well.

Dolt Supports Replication

What do we do for high availability?

Like MySQL and Postgres, Dolt supports standby replication for high availability. Additional open source tooling like ProxySQL can be configured for cluster management. If you have a favorite high availability tool, we will make it work with Dolt and Doltgres.

Dolt has a Great Backup Story

How do we handle backups?

Dolt has the best data backup story in the SQL databases category. First, Dolt supports full Git-style version control on all you tables, both schema and data. So, the history of your database is always accessible and online. You can even revert individual bad changes. You don't have to rely on a dump and a stored binlog.

To get a copy of your database off of a single machine, Dolt supports replication, Git-style remotes, and a Dolt-specific backup process. There are a number of options and which one is best for you depends on your use case.

Dolt Works With Docker

How will Dolt fit in with our deployment infrastructure?

Dolt is a single downloadable compiled binary. There's no mess of dependencies to manage. So, Dolt fits into almost any deployment infrastructure.

That said, the most popular way to deploy Dolt is via Docker. The Dolt sql-server image is modeled after MySQL's image so your DBA should feel right at home deploying it. Additionally, we will soon be open sourcing a Kubernetes operator to help manage cluster deployments.

Dolt Works With Other MySQL Tooling

What about all our other database tooling?

Any tool that works with MySQL should work with Dolt out of the box. Recent tools we've tested and blogged about include Datadog and Vault. If it works with MySQL it works with Dolt or it's a bug and we'll fix it in 24 hours or less.

Start with a Replica

I'm still not convinced. Is there a risk free way to try it?

If after reading all this, you want a risk free way to try Dolt, set it up as a replica to an existing MySQL deployment. You now have a full audit log of every cell in your database on a Dolt replica.

DoltHub Sells Enterprise Support

We need a vendor relationship to adopt databases.

DoltHub, the company behind Dolt, offers paid enterprise support for interested companies. A 24/7 support option is available. Contact our Sales team if you are interested.

Hosted Dolt

I don't want to run it myself. Is there a hosted option?

We also built Hosted Dolt which is like AWS RDS for Dolt. Hosted Dolt supports public and private deployments on both AWS and Google Cloud. Hosted Dolt comes bundled with 24/7 enterprise support.

Conclusion

We surely must have answered all your stakeholder's questions by now. Do you have any more reasons not to give Dolt a try? We're happy to provide additional answers live via our Discord. Come by and ask. We'll convince you.