Interview with Wang Zhufeng, Qunar.com Database Director on DTCC Conference Insights and Database Evolution

DTCC is one of China’s premier database conferences, celebrating a decade of rapid development in distributed databases, NoSQL, and NewSQL technologies that rival Oracle and DB2.

Technical Academy interviewed Wang Zhufeng, Director of Database at Qunar.com, who has been a regular speaker at DTCC and focuses on MySQL source‑code research, database development, and maintenance.

Technical Academy: Please briefly introduce yourself.

Wang: I have been at Qunar for nearly six years, witnessing and contributing to the company’s database transformation from a basic stage to a mature, stable, secure, and automated environment, now supporting large‑scale, transaction‑heavy services.

Technical Academy: How do you view the DTCC conference?

Wang: DTCC is highly professional and authoritative, serving as a technology benchmark for database practitioners. It offers networking, insight into industry gaps, and a platform to share solutions and future directions, making it indispensable for the community.

Technical Academy: What’s different this year compared to previous DTCC events?

Wang: The focus has shifted from master‑slave architectures to cloud‑native, automated, and clustered databases, reflecting a broader industry move toward cloudification and high‑availability solutions.

Technical Academy: Briefly describe your talk at this year’s DTCC.

Wang: My presentation, “Qunar.com MySQL Architecture Evolution,” compared past and current architectures, highlighted cluster‑based consistency solutions, and discussed future directions such as storage‑compute separation and cloud‑native databases.

Technical Academy: What achievements has Qunar made in database technology?

Wang: Since 2014 we adopted the PXC cluster for true consistency, built a distributed monitoring system with voting for node health, and open‑sourced a MySQL audit tool widely used nationwide.

Technical Academy: How does Qunar handle data consistency?

Wang: We avoid master‑slave replication, opting for a design that inherently guarantees consistency, allowing safe dual‑writes and seamless node switching without data divergence.

Technical Academy: What future trends do you foresee for databases?

Wang: The industry is moving toward clustering, cloudification, automation, and intelligence, with the ultimate goal of separating compute from storage to achieve cloud‑native databases.

Technical Academy: What opportunities and challenges will these trends bring to Qunar?

Wang: Prioritizing clustering ensures reliable transaction data; exploring distributed databases can enable large‑scale offline analytics. The main challenge is continuous learning to keep pace with emerging technologies.

Technical Academy: What are your plans and goals for Qunar’s database direction?

Wang: We focus on four "‑ization": clustering, intelligence, automation, and service‑orientation.

Technical Academy: Advice for students aspiring to work in databases?

Wang: Stay curious about new technologies, practice continuously, and dive into source code. Understanding MySQL internals and contributing plugins can differentiate you; I recommend the book “MySQL Operations Reference”.