Modernization of Databases in the Cloud Era: Building Databases that Run Like Legos

Utilizing cloud for common and critical computing infrastructures has already become the norm across the board. The rapid evolvement of the underlying cloud infrastructure and the revolutionary development of AI present both challenges and opportunities for building new database architectures and systems. It is crucial to modernize database systems in the cloud era, so that next generation cloud native databases may run like legos-they are adaptive, flexible, reliable, and smart towards dynamic workloads and varying requirements. That said, we observe four critical trends and requirements for the modernization of cloud databases: embracing cloud-native architecture, full integration with cloud platform and orchestration, co-design for data fabric, and moving towards being AI augmented. Modernizing database systems by adopting these critical trends and addressing key challenges associated with them provide ample opportunities for data management communities from both academia and industry to explore. We will provide an in-depth case study of how we modernize PolarDB with respect to embracing these four trends in the cloud era. Our ultimate goal is to build databases that run just like playing with legos, so that a database system fits for rich and dynamic workloads and requirements in a self-adaptive, performant, easy-/intuitive-to use, reliable, and intelligent manner.