The Database Divide: SQL or NoSQL
April 13, 2016
I enjoy reading about technical issues which depend on use cases. When I read “Big Data And RDBMS: Can They Coexist?”, I thought about the premise, not the article. Information Week is one of those once, high flying dead tree outfits which have embraced digital. My hunch is that the juicy headline is designed less to speak to technical issues and more to the need to create some traffic.
In my case, it worked. I clicked. I read. I ignored because obviously specific methods exist because there are different problems to solve.
Here’s what I read after the lusted after click:
Peaceful coexistence is turning out to be the norm, as the two technologies prove to be complementary, not exclusive. As much as casual observers would like to see big data technologies win the future, RDBMS (the basis for SQL and database systems such as Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB82, Oracle, and MySQL) is going to stick around for a bit longer.
So this is news? In an organization, some types of use cases are appropriate for the row and column approach. Think Excel. Others are better addressed with a whizzy system like Cassandra or a similar data management tool.
The write up reported that Codd based systems are pretty useful for transactions. Yep, that is accurate for most transactional applications. But there are some situations better suited to different approaches. My hunch is that is why Palantir Technologies developed its data management middleware AtlasDB, but let’s not get caught in a specific approach.
The write up points out that governance is a good idea. The context for governance is the SQL world, but my experience is that figuring out what to analyze and how to ensure “good enough” data quality is important for the NoSQL crowd as well.
I noted this statement from the wizard “Brown” who authored Data Mining for Dummies:
Users are not always clear [RDBMS and big data] are different products,” Brown said. “The sales reps are steering them to whatever product they want [the users] to buy.”
Yep, sales. Writing about data can educate, entertain, or market.
In this case, the notion that two technologies themselves content for attention does little to help one determine what method to use and when. Marketing triumphs.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2016
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
