Yesterday we posted my NoSQL Tech Brief on GigaOM Pro. It’s an exciting time (both in the database market and for me as this is my first report for GigaOM Pro). Sweeping change is taking place across the database landscape. Read on to find out how and why – and what it means to you.
Carlo Strozzi coined the term NoSQL (“not only SQL”) in 1998, referring to a lightweight database that did not expose a SQL interface. In 2009, Eric Evans of Rackspace dredged up the term, whose meaning is still being debated by its minter, while organizing an event with Johan Oskarsson of Last.fm to discuss the growing number of non-relational distributed data stores.
No one likes this term. Attempting to describe something by what it isn’t typically doesn’t work—and this is about data store relationships and not about SQL at all. Yet NoSQL databases have significant advantages, including:
- Seemingly infinite scalability
- Extraordinary fault tolerance
- High availability
- A design-friendly lack of schema
- Integration of both RESTful and cloud computing technologies
Disadvantages revolve around a basic fact: These are not relational databases built to rapidly process transactions, perform error checking, and maintain data integrity.
Today’s large-scale databases are designed to dynamically repair node failures by partitioning and replicating data across clusters. Partitioning the data not only minimizes the impact of any single hardware failure but also distributes the load of database operations. Nonrelational databases typically have the ability to maintain multiple hot copies of data. Nodes can fail or be added and replications compiled and moved on the fly. Some NoSQL databases are flexible enough to allow for control over which objects are stored on which replicas to improve performance and scalability.
SQL RDBMS transaction processing is not going to disappear. Traditional database design principles still hold true when transactional integrity and immediate consistency are required. However, where horizontal scaling to millions of concurrent users is a requirement, nonrelational or NoSQL databases warrant serious consideration.
Has this posting piqued your curiosity? If so, read the full report on GigaOM Pro. The report includes an history of the database market and how we got to NoSQL, an overview of the current NoSQL landscape, evaluations of specific NoSQL software, and cases studies demonstrating the utility of NoSQL for real businesses.
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