I was reading some stuff on the internet about blockchain and stumbled upon a presentation of a “masterclass blockchain” on a website of the belgian government. (link: https://overheid.vlaanderen.be/informatie-vlaanderen/nieuws/presentatie-blockchain-masterclass-staat-online)
I was watching the presentation and read about “bigchain db” (https://www.bigchaindb.com/), a blockchain database. Any thoughts on this ?
Until now I heard a lot of statements that blockchain and databases cannot be named in the same sentence.
Curious if there are people in here that have experience with this.
Here is a good article that summarizes the core differences between a blockchain and a database. It’s short and to the point 
To summarize it, it depends on purpose. Blockchains are slower than databases but provide more security. Also, blockchains don’t require trust, while databases do for their administrators.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the link, interesting.
I thought sidechains were used to solve the scalability problem?
Why would one combine a database with a blockchain if you can solve the scalability problem within the same technology?
(maybe I understand some things in a wrong way )
Sidechains wouldn’t make a difference for this “database” blockchain use-case. Sidechains are kind of like an open “IOU”. Transactions would happen back and forth, off-chain, and would be settled on-chain whenever one of the stakeholders in the sidechain decide to close it. Only the final tally would be recorded on the blockchain, rather than the whole transaction history.
So yes, sidechains are ONE of the multiple proposed solutions for scalability on a blockchain network. But I don’t think it can be used for a database/storage use-case such as bigchaindb.