We had a lively discussion at Structure 2010 about Scaling Databases in the Cloud.

You can view an archived stream of the panel discussion at the Structure website, but for now here are some of the cool things we discussed:

• Is your project appropriate for NoSQL?  Start by looking at the data model and the workload and you’ll know what works best for your needs
• NoSQL is not necessarily any better for the cloud than SQL.  That’s not a compelling reason to use it.
• Advantages of NoSQL include being designed from the ground up for parallel distributed processing and automated clustering, low latency, in memory caching and concurrency processing
• A major advantage of NoSQL databases are their ability to scale horizontally on commodity hardware
• The ability to recover transparently from hardware failure
• Developers don’t like SQL to begin with so we’re not going to have to fire them all to have them learn NoSQL solutions
• Neo4J says 70-80% of their implementation are in the enterprise and Terracotta says they’re 50-60% in the enterprise

Stay tuned for more NoSQL and Structure 2010 info.

UPDATE: Watch the panel discussion, below.

Today is the big day, the culmination of 3 months of research on NoSQL (not-only SQL) research and writing. It’s the panel discussion at 8am at Structure 2010.

Scaling the Database in the Cloud

As we move our legacy applications to the cloud we are discovering that not all elements scale equally — in particular, legacy databases. In this panel we investigate the differing approaches taken by hot new technology startups and the options customers have when it comes to choosing between scaling legacy systems or transferring to new database platforms.

I’m moderating and speakers include:
Roger Bodamer SVP Product and Engineering, 10gen
Emil Eifrem CEO, Neo Technology
Mike Hoskins CTO and GM, Integration Products, Pervasive Software
Paul Mikesell Founder and CEO, Clustrix
Amit Pandey CEO, Terracotta
James Phillips Co-Founder and CSO, NorthScale