GoKawiilAmpbase details how it built database features atop Tigris object storage
Ampbase's founder JP explained how the company replaced a traditional relational database with Tigris, an object storage system built on FoundationDB, using only two storage primitives. To make this work, Ampbase had to manually implement unique constraints, transactions, indices, and history tables, features a normal database engine provides automatically.
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The approach shows both the appeal and risk of skipping conventional databases: it can simplify infrastructure but shifts significant engineering burden onto the team to recreate core reliability guarantees. It's a useful case study for developers weighing object storage against managed databases for building scalable backend systems.
- Tigris uses FoundationDB as its underlying distributed key-value store.
- Ampbase built its own versions of unique constraints, transactions, indices, and audit logs on top of object storage.
- The post is a technical deep-dive into trade-offs of avoiding traditional relational databases.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications (Martin Kleppmann) — If this deep dive into rebuilding transactions, indices, and unique constraints on top of object storage hooked you, Kleppmann's book is the canonical companion. It walks through exactly these primitives—consistency, distributed key-value stores, and log-based history—so you can reason about when you truly need a database and when storage is enough.
See Designing Data-Intensive Applications (Martin Kleppmann) on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: tigrisdata.com — Founder, 2026-09-08
Published there as: “Object storage is all you need”
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