fdb

FDB most commonly denotes FoundationDB, a distributed transactional NoSQL database system. FoundationDB was created by FoundationDB, Inc. and later acquired by Apple Inc. in 2015. The project is open source under the Apache 2.0 license and is maintained by Apple together with the community. It is designed to run at scale on commodity hardware and in cloud environments.

Overview and design: FoundationDB provides a single, ordered key-value store that can scale across clusters and geographic regions. It supports serializable ACID transactions, ensuring strong consistency even for complex, multi-key operations. The architecture is layered: a core distributed database handles transactions and key distribution, while optional layers implement higher-level data models such as document stores, graphs, or relational-like interfaces. This layered approach allows developers to choose or build models on top of a stable transactional foundation.

Key features: It uses multi-version concurrency control and a deterministic transaction protocol, enabling predictable behavior under high concurrency. Data distribution and replication provide fault tolerance, while automatic failover helps maintain availability. The system aims to preserve a single, global key space, simplifying data organization across different models and services.

Usage and ecosystem: FoundationDB is used in large-scale applications and cloud deployments that require strong consistency and transactional guarantees across diverse workloads. It has a growing ecosystem of language bindings and community-supported layers, facilitating integration with various development stacks.

Other contexts: FDB can refer to other organizations or products outside computing. This article focuses on FoundationDB as the primary computing-related meaning of the acronym.