kevinlawler

kerf

C++2015–2022

kevinlawler / kerf

kerf

Kerf (Kerf2) is a columnar tick database and time-series language for Linux/OSX/BSD/iOS/Android. It is written in C++ and natively speaks JSON and SQL. Kerf can be used for trading platforms, feedhandlers, low-latency networking, high-volume analysis of realtime and historical data, logfile processing, and more.

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11Distinct people

14Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

38GitHub stars

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Also in these discussions

kevinlawler/kona · linked in 2 of the same discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year14 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-04-08 17:37:00 UTC to 2022-07-23 08:57:40 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

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UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2015	2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	8	4	4
2016	2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	4	0	4
2017	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2018	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1	0
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1

What Hacker News says

14 sources

rochoa·Jul 23, 2022

There is also https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf > Kerf2 is designed for full concurrency. It also adds transparent type promotion, a C++ instead of C basis, and more. Which goes unlicensed right now and was created just a bit before the license change in Kerf1. I wonder if Kerf1 will get any more attention or the focus is now at Kerf2.

In Kerf Time Series Lang and Columnar DB Open Sourced

tosh·Jan 10, 2020Submission

kerf

1 points · Open discussion

threeseed·Sep 2, 2016

https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf It has no benchmarks so that's not a good sign. But there is another time series database that also allows you to use basic SQL: InfluxDB.

In Atlas Data Structure

eggy·Aug 10, 2016

I didn't know about any new effort with Nial. I'll have to check it out. The distributed and GPU parts are especially enticing to me. CUDA is wearing me out! I have really become comfortable with J now, and I don't know if it would help me to step into a text-based APLish language. More typing for me to do the same I do in J, and I don't code for or with others, so no collaboration arguments here. And, I can read my old J programs just fine, even years later. Most code fits in a glance, and if you are not very practiced, very little time to refresh as opposed to looking through pages of 'easy to read' Python for example. How is Kerf [1] coming along? How similar to J? [1] https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf

In APL Tutorial

eggy·May 24, 2016

KDB+/Q/K is all about analytics too. It is used in more than just financial time series data. Such as power utility usage and resourcing for one. Hadoop is also about distributed computing, but if the process requires 250x as much RAM, you're going to have a very high TCO regardless of how cheap RAM or servers can be. J is an opensource APL-derived language, but different in some important ways, but it is not as fast as KDB+/Q/K. J is truly an array-based language, whereas K is list based, so it has more in common with Lisp in that singular respect. Kerf is a new language being worked on by one of the creators of the Kona language, an opensource version of the K3 language [1]. It seems these type of articles ignore non-opensource solutions even if they are more efficient in many ways including TCO. How many man-years need to be spent to t

Read the rest

ry and duplicate an existing solution, and still not be a better solution? [1] https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf

In Spark as a Compiler: Joining a Billion Rows per Second on a Laptop

eggy·May 10, 2016

I don't know Riak, other than its a distributed NoSQL key-value data store. Time series has always been prevalent in the fintec and quantitative finance, and other disciplines for decades. I read a book in the early 1990s on music as time series data, financial tickers, and so on. How is Riak different, or more suited to use than Kdb + q, J with JDB (free), Jd (a commercial J database like Kdb/q)[2], or the new Kerf lang/db being developed by Kevin Lawler[3]? Kevin also wrote kona, an opensource version of the "K programming language"[4]. Kdb is very fast at time series analysis on large datasets, and has many years of proven value in the financial industry. [1] https://kx.com/ [2] http://www.jsoftware.com/jdhelp/overview.html [3] https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf [4] https://github.com/kevinlawler/kona

In Time Series, the new shiny?

brudgers·Dec 16, 2015

Kerf homepage: http://www.kerfsoftware.com/ Kerf github: https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf

In An introduction to Kerf

eggy·Dec 16, 2015Submission

Kerf – Array language and database in one

Kerf appears to be an array-based language similar to J/K/APL, and a database all rolled into one [1]. I am a long time fan of the J Programming language, and I have followed Scott Locklin's blog for a bit now, so I was very happy to see this [2]. There is an evaluation copy that expires, and updates are available as it changes. I will take it for a spin to see how it compares to J. I see they have an email and reference to sales, so I assume it is going to compete with KDB from Kx systems. [1] https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/ [2] https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf

8 points · Open discussion

srpeck·Dec 16, 2015

Great description from the reference manual (https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf/blob/master/manual/refma...): "Kerf is a programming language built on pragmatism, borrowing ideas from many popular tools. The syntax of Kerf will be familiar enough to anyone who has programmed in C, Python or VBA. Data is described using syntax from JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), a text-based data interchange format. Queries to search, sort and aggregate data can be performed using SQL syntax. Kerf’s built-in commands have aliases which allow programmers to use names and terms they are already used to."

In An introduction to Kerf

tlack·Sep 19, 2015

Depressing surprise move for those of us that were interested in this quirky tiny platform. To announce this in between versions (ie 3.3) without using official channels like Twitter, their news feed, or their KXCommunity blog, is quite baffling. If you value the way of computing that K and Q enable, some truly free alternatives include: Kona, a lively and fresh implementation of an earlier version of K (K3): https://github.com/kevinlawler/kona Kuc, a language that reads much like K, but features some interesting new ideas, such as mmap as a verb, closures (and their direct descendant objects), and an inspectable machine code-like intermediate representation of code (but sadly not data): https://github.com/zholos/kuc oK.js, the funky, bright JavaScript implementation that is quickly becoming a busy place on Github: https://github.com/John

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Earnest/ok Sadly, the brilliant Kevin Lawler's Kerf begins to look less interesting once one considers the license. Still, its embrace of Json is something for other implementors note. https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf That brings us to http://kparc.com. In the gloomy distance, beyond the pillowy smoke of the fires on which we burnt our printed out Q tutorials for warmth, where we still fight over tattered copies of the crippled pre-crisis K4/32b interpreter, there is an ivory tower, the inhabitants of which, it is said, look down on us mortals with benign disdain. Kparc promises us the interesting K5 and the life changing kOS. Their frustratingly secret work could be among the most important in the study of sustainable computing and different concepts of implementation. Here, at long last, Arthur will bring his significant genius to the task of the user interface, still the torpid cesspool of the developers dreary life. Tantalizing dreams of a free K seem dead now, but some remember those sultry rumors. Sadly, whether or not we'll ever get to actually use it remains an open question.

In Tell HN: Q/Kdb 32-bit no longer free for commercial use

revorad·Aug 28, 2015Submission

Kerf

2 points · Open discussion

luu·Jun 26, 2015Submission

Kerf: a columnar tick database for Linux, OS X, BSD, iOS, Android

62 points · Open discussion

kcl·Jun 26, 2015

You might give Kerf a try: https://github.com/kevinlawler/kerf

In Ask HN: APL family instead of R for data analysis?

twotwotwo·Apr 8, 2015Submission

Kerf – array programming and query language for iOS