When to use REGIONAL vs. GLOBAL tables

New in v21.1: Table Localities tell CockroachDB how to optimize access to a table's data in a multi-region cluster. CockroachDB uses the table locality setting to determine how to optimize access to the table's data from that locality.

The following table localities are available:

  • REGIONAL
  • GLOBAL

Use REGIONAL tables if:

  • Your application requires low-latency reads and writes from a single region (either at the row level or the table level).
  • Access to the table's data can be slower (higher latency) from other regions.

Use GLOBAL tables if:

  • Your application has a "read-mostly" table of reference data that is rarely updated, and that needs to be available to all regions.
  • You can accept that writes to the table will incur higher latencies from any given region, since writes use a novel non-blocking transaction protocol that uses a timestamp "in the future" (documentation forthcoming).
Tip:

For more information about how to choose an overall multi-region configuration, see Choosing a multi-region configuration.

See also

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