Database / Mnesia basics Interview questions
Describe the difference between a Mnesia table and an ETS table?
Mnesia tables are actually built on top of ETS (or DETS for disk-only storage), so they share the same underlying storage engine — the difference is entirely in what Mnesia layers on top.
| ETS table | Mnesia table |
| Node-local only; no built-in replication. | Can be replicated across multiple nodes. |
| No built-in transactions; operations are inherently "dirty." | Supports ACID-style transactions across multiple tables and nodes. |
| In-memory only. | Can be in-memory, on-disk, or both, per table. |
| Lower overhead per operation. | Extra overhead for transaction coordination and replication. |
In short: ETS gives you raw, fast, local storage; Mnesia adds the database-like guarantees (transactions, replication, durability) on top, at the cost of some overhead you don't pay when using ETS directly.
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