Extending immutability: deletion without losing data

Tigris has a pretty advanced replication scheme for writes. What happens when you actually need to delete things? Turns out deleting things is hard in distributed systems. Especially when you have a geo-replicated active-active database like Tigris does. We can (and do) use tombstones to mark where data once was, but how do you let people undo an accidental delete? Tigris wants to turn storage inside out, so our implementation of soft deletion is by giving users the Recycle Bin for objects and buckets. Today we're going to dig into how this works, why it works, and what this gives you in terms of using object storage today. Recycle bins and you In Windows and macOS, the Recycle Bin (or Trash can) is a form of purgatory where deleted files wait for their storage to be deallocated by the user. This allows users to hit "delete" fearlessly because if they made a mistake they can just drag it back out and go on with life. This works great in your local filesystem because there's only one…