To support features that weren’t available over the MySQL protocol, PlanetScale’s infrastructure engineering team decided to build a publicly accessible HTTP API. After the development of a serverless driver for Javascript and other features, it begged the question: How does the performance of HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 compare with the MySQL protocol?

In this talk, Matt Robenolt explores:

The benefits of building a gRPC-compatible API provides

Rationale behind the adoption of HTTP(S) in serverless contexts

Potential advantages of HTTP/3, especially with its use of UDP and the QUIC transport protocol

Practical comparisons between the MySQL protocol, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3

Through a series of tests, ranging from “cold starts” to managing large data sets, there were some intriguing findings. Great watch for those keen on understanding the implications of protocol choices on database performance.