Can ZooKeeper be a substitute for traditional databases?

ZooKeeper is typically used as a coordination service in distributed systems to manage and maintain coordination and synchronization between nodes in a cluster. Despite being a powerful tool, ZooKeeper is not designed to replace traditional database systems.

Traditional database systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle are commonly used for storing structured data, providing ACID transaction support, and complex query capabilities. These databases are suitable for handling transactional workloads and applications that require frequent read and write operations on data.

In contrast, ZooKeeper focuses more on providing features such as high availability, consistency, and fault tolerance, to coordinate tasks like state management and leader election among nodes in distributed systems. ZooKeeper uses a simple data model (similar to a file system) to typically store small amounts of metadata information.

Therefore, although ZooKeeper plays a crucial role in distributed systems, it cannot completely replace traditional database systems. In practice, ZooKeeper is often used in conjunction with traditional database systems to achieve a more comprehensive distributed application architecture.