Building a Linearizable Log on READ COMMITTED Isolation
Summary
This article explains how Materialize redesigned its metadata store to provide a linearizable log using READ COMMITTED isolation, achieving higher write throughput and resilience under load. It covers the contiguity invariant, the compare-and-set implementation, truncation handling, rollout reasoning, and formal verification in Lean 4, with benchmark results showing significant improvements. The content is highly technical and directly relevant to distributed databases, transactions, and performance optimization in cloud deployments.