Abstract

Irminsule is a new database designed specifically to run in distributed, decentralised settings. It builds on the principles of Git to give the user the same primitives as distributed version control systems, exposing pull, merge and push operations with other replicas of the database. Conflicts are resolved at the application level via merge functions defined specifically for the usecase at hand, and consistency models can be tailored to reduce the conventional overheads of general purpose databases.

Since Irminsule is a library, it lets the application choose several backend storage modes, including Git, HTTP /REST, in-memory trees, and an encrypted block store. Higher-level data structures such as queues, maps and sets are built as additional libraries. Use-cases for Irminsule include distributed tracing in a cloud environment, coordination systems for virtual machines and processes, encrypted file stores with provenance tracking, and even web application persistence via compilation to JavaScript.