system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
how do databases maintain connections so reliably?

i can leave a connection open for more than 24 hours, an individual query can run for up to an hour, scanning terabytes of data, and transferring dozens of gigabytes. while failures during these operations are very rare. it seems a lot more robust than all but the most advanced web sites.
gpt
I think a large part of it is simply due to the fact that we _need_ databases to be reliable. If a database messes up, data can be permanently altered. If a website has a bug (frontend at least), the user is mildly annoyed until it is fixed. There's more incentive/necessity to create a reliable database, so more tests are written, code is scrutinized harder, and there are higher bars to check in code.

There's also a not as controllable factor. For the most part the the data being processed in a database is physically very close - either in the same machine or over fast and reliable network connections in the same datacenter. Websites on the other hand have to be able to serve data across thousands of miles of wires or through the air, hoping all the right bits stay in place.