In July 2020, while many recent college graduates were still worried about finding jobs, Taifeng had already successfully completed his internship and officially become a Database Administrator (DBA) at Trip.com.
In 2020, the year Taifeng graduated, the number of college graduates in China hit a record high of 8.74 million, making graduate employment a widely discussed societal issue.
Taifeng had been admitted to Shanghai University seven years prior, where he began studying Computer Science and Technology. By his senior year, he had already completed all his required courses and credits, with only his thesis remaining. This gave him ample time to intern and job-hunt. In August 2019, Taifeng joined Trip.com’s database team as an intern. Thanks to his excellent performance, he was offered a full-time position in July 2020, officially embarking on his DBA journey.
Becoming a DBA by Accident
Becoming a DBA was never part of Taifeng’s original plan. Before stepping into the role, he only had a vague idea of what a DBA actually did, and his understanding of database products was limited to the basics — knowing only of MySQL, SQL Server, and Oracle. Fortunately, Shanghai University emphasized foundational knowledge, and his solid background in computer science allowed him to quickly adapt to the new role.
Since childhood, Taifeng had enjoyed playing games and using computers. He had an early interest in computing and even represented Shanghai in the National Olympiad in Informatics in Provinces (NOIP), earning impressive rankings. This was a major reason he later chose to major in computer science. However, computer science wasn’t actually his first choice — math was. But that year, the admission score for math at Shanghai University was higher, so he ended up in the School of Computer Science.
Although he didn’t get into his ideal major, Taifeng has no regrets.
“The outcome would’ve probably been the same. Even if I had majored in math, I’d likely have ended up in the IT industry,” he said with a smile.
At Trip.com, the database team is responsible for the operation of a wide range of database products including MySQL, Redis, TiDB, OceanBase, MongoDB, HBase, SQL Server, and more — covering tens of thousands of instances. These databases are at the very core of Trip.com’s infrastructure, and to manage them, the company has built a top-tier DBA team of over 30 people, including some well-known database experts and authors.
When Taifeng joined the company, Trip.com had already established a mature set of management processes, and most routine maintenance tasks were automated or proceduralized. Daily database operations account for only a small part of a DBA’s job; most of the time is spent developing ops tools and improving capabilities. Being able to work with database internals and apply university knowledge in real-world scenarios excited Taifeng greatly.
As an intern, he quickly adapted to the role and fell in love with the work.
“One thing I remember clearly is when I first started, the company was upgrading MySQL from version 5.6 to 5.7. We all studied GTID (a new 5.7 feature) together and ran experiments after hours. I thought it was really fun. Later, as I understood MySQL more deeply and started working with OceanBase, my interest in distributed databases only grew,” Taifeng said.
Interest is the best teacher. Since joining Trip.com, Taifeng has grown quickly, earning certifications such as the OceanBase OBCP and TiDB PCTP. He has also authored several technical articles on OceanBase in the community. Today, he is a Senior Database Engineer at Trip.com and a highly capable DBA.
Migrating to Distributed Databases
Trip.com’s early business systems were built on SQL Server using a traditional SQL Server + mainframe architecture. As the business rapidly expanded, data volume exploded, data types diversified, and more database types were introduced. At the same time, the high cost and lack of flexibility of the traditional architecture became increasingly apparent.
After 2010, as Chinese internet companies began moving away from the “IOE” (IBM, Oracle, EMC) model, Trip.com also started moving off SQL Server and mainframes. By the time Taifeng began his internship in 2019, the transition was nearly complete — most SQL Server workloads had already been migrated to MySQL.
However, as MySQL usage increased, its limitations became obvious. A major issue was scalability. As a centralized database, MySQL is inherently limited in scalability — scaling is difficult and costly. It often requires sharding and middleware, which increases complexity, raises the technical bar, and depends heavily on developer support. Taifeng experienced several scaling efforts himself, each time handling the process with extreme caution to avoid errors, often ending up physically and mentally drained.
Another problem was the risk of “split-brain” in MySQL clusters. If the network fails and the cluster splits into several disconnected sub-clusters, data inconsistency arises, and DBAs have to manually verify and fix data — an exhausting task.
The rise of distributed databases gave Trip.com hope. Distributed databases are designed for scalability and high availability. Replacing MySQL with a distributed solution would address Trip.com’s two biggest concerns.
Confident in their DBA team, Trip.com cautiously decided to replace some MySQL workloads with distributed databases. The next step was choosing the right one.
At the time, there were three main categories of distributed databases:
Middleware + traditional centralized databases
Native distributed databases
Hybrid solutions using shared-storage architecture
Trip.com chose to evaluate native distributed databases, and with the condition that the database must be open-source to allow deeper internal understanding and tool development.
A New Opportunity for Domestic Databases
After thorough evaluation, Trip.com selected OceanBase. Once the decision was made, progress was swift. OceanBase open-sourced in June 2021. Trip.com began full evaluation and testing the same month, and by July, it was already running some development and testing projects. As of this year, over 20 OceanBase clusters are running in production, covering some order and settlement systems as well as several non-core business areas.
From a DBA’s perspective, Taifeng highlighted three key benefits of OceanBase:
High availability and split-brain prevention
OceanBase uses the Paxos distributed consensus algorithm to prevent cluster split issues.
Excellent scalability that reduces DBA workload
Expansion becomes a simple deployment task. One command, and the system handles the rest automatically.
High compression ratios reduce storage costs
OceanBase uses an LSM-Tree storage structure with built-in compression during data merging. Its tight storage layout also minimizes space waste.
Taifeng revealed that before choosing OceanBase, Trip.com had already deployed another native distributed database at a considerable scale. The two now coexist, each serving different use cases within Trip.com’s architecture.
After evaluating several domestic distributed databases, Taifeng has developed a broad understanding of the field. He believes the technical level of China’s distributed databases is very high and is optimistic about their future.
“The government is actively supporting domestic alternatives, and the market is booming with innovation and rapid iteration. This strong foundation bodes well for the future of domestic databases,” said Taifeng.
He believes distributed databases are the future of the industry.
“As data volumes grow and network performance improves, the advantages of distributed databases will become even more apparent.”
That said, he also noted areas for improvement. For example, fault diagnosis in domestic databases still lags behind systems like Oracle, which offer rich diagnostic tools and reports that allow quick problem identification.
In addition, the surrounding ecosystem must mature quickly to lower the barrier for deployment. Trip.com has the technical capacity to build in-house tools. For instance, to sync OceanBase with MySQL, they developed a migration toolkit covering compatibility checks, performance testing, full and incremental data sync, and more. They also built a log analysis platform for OceanBase using the ELK stack. But not every company can do this. For most businesses, the vendor’s original capabilities will be critical.
A DBA Must Dig Deep Into the System
Taifeng has been a DBA at Trip.com for only a few years, but he looks back at his time with pride. He’s especially grateful for the help from his colleagues and the strong technical atmosphere, which allowed him to grow quickly. The team wasn’t bogged down by routine operations, which gave him more time to focus on technical mastery and faster progress.
When asked about the DBA profession, Taifeng said he holds himself to a simple standard:
“A good DBA is one who can sleep well at night.”
“You have to have confidence in the tools you build and the databases you manage. If you’re losing sleep, that means you don’t fully trust your systems — and that means you’re not technically mature enough.”
But confidence must be grounded in real technical skill, not blind optimism. That’s why Taifeng believes DBAs should understand the internal workings of databases and know how to solve problems from first principles. Not only should you be able to fix issues — you should be able to explain why your solution works.
“Being a DBA requires time and experience. You have to grow by constantly solving problems. The knowledge base is also wide: it’s not just about databases — you need to understand operating systems, networks, and servers. You need the capability of an SRE.”
He also emphasized the need for patience and discipline.
“You have to be calm, read the documentation, build your own test environments. Don’t stop at operations — write code. That’s how you go far.”
Taifeng has a personal goal:
“To become someone like OceanBase’s founder, Yang Zhenkun — a true scientist in the field of databases.”
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