Introduction of Hypermnesia for Automatic Conflict Resolution in Mnesia

In this recorded talk from Code BEAM Europe 2023, Vincent Liu, a recent graduate from the University of Cambridge, presents Hypermnesia, an extension to the Mnesia database. Mnesia is widely used in Erlang/OTP applications for its high performance and tight integration with the language but lacks automated conflict resolution after network partitions. The talk details how Hypermnesia employs Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) to achieve automatic conflict resolution, eliminating the need for manual intervention. Vincent explains the architecture of Hypermnesia, including the async_ec access context for streamlining replica reconciliation. The presentation also covers performance benchmarking and practical usage examples, emphasizing that Hypermnesia maintains backwards compatibility and minimizes overhead. Additionally, Liu highlights the flexibility and developer-friendly nature of Hypermnesia, inviting feedback and further collaboration to integrate it as a main feature in OTP.