Tech Talk Co-Founder Ben Darnell explores PostgreSQL’s unexpected behavior under READ COMMITTED isolation, revealing a tendency to miss rows during certain operations. In contrast, CockroachDB’s approach to READ COMMITTED isolation avoids this issue by implementing a different technique that ensures all rows are correctly updated. Through a detailed comparison of conflicting updates in both databases, the superiority of CockroachDB’s method becomes evident, as it prevents anomalies and eliminates the need for application-level retries. This insightful analysis sheds light on the inner workings of these databases and the importance of choosing the right mechanisms to prevent lost-update anomalies.
https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why-cockroachdb-doesnt-use-evalplanqual/