Iran Hutchinson





I work for InterSystems who drives the new http://globalsdb.org
NoSQL project.
Email: iran.hutchinson@intersystems.com
Twitter: #iranic
Skype: chatwithiran

 … NoSQL Databases
 Understanding what they are
 Understanding how to leverage their strengths
 Understanding their weaknesses
 Staying away from hype and religious wars
 Fighting your developer demon



Edgar Frank “Ted” Codd
Known for 12 Rules (0 ~ 12) for Relational Data
Systems



Rule 1: The information Rule
 All information is represented in 1 and only 1 way, namely by values in column positions within rows of tables
Rule 12: The no subversion Rule
 If the system provides a low-level (record-at-atime) interface, then that interface cannot be used to subvert the system i.e. relational security or integrity constraints.



Simple APIs
 Java Example: Document.save(myObject)
Seamless language integration




 No impedance mismatch
Designed to be horizontally scalable (elastic)
Flexible data model
Majority free and/or Open Source
Free and Commercial production support






Proven
Available talent / Well-known
AD-Hoc querying
Scalable (limits?)
Free and Commercial production support






Interface for data access
Limited horizontal scalability?
Impedance mismatches
Programming model
In-flexible data model




Does not include the underlying data structure.
B-tree and B+-trees can be fast and efficient
The relational model + SQL can limit B-trees



 Class of data management systems inherently
 Non-relational
 Distributed
 Horizontally scalable
 With optional schemas
 Providing simple APIs
Term Not-Only-SQL recently embraced
Dave Kellog’s Blog Post








No to ACID
No to the impedance mismatch with SQL
Dealing with Big Data and Web Scale
High prices from RDBMS vendors
Use commodity hardware
Flexible data models
It’s a cool movement ….





No
Remember MUMPS?
 SET ^Car("Door","Color")="BLUE”
Remember Multi-value/PICK
 MATWRITE array.variable ON file.variable,id. ….
Ever heard of the NoSQL RDB?

Key-Value
Graph
Data
Document
Column



This depends on your use case.
Example


 http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Use+Cas es
Compare your problems to others.
Example:
 http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/PoweredBy




 http://nosql-database.org/ lists 122 today.
Depends on your model selection.
Most likely choose well-known project.
Don’t forget about shared risk!





Some solutions have no querying
When available query languages differ
Lack of general AD-Hoc querying – “no” SQL
NOTE: Toad for Cloud






Skills
Data Model
Data format
Tools
Standards?



Some databases are not as proven
Incomplete NoSQL solutions
 You write a larger data management tier
 You maintain your business code and infrastructure code
 You have to customize management and deployment technology and procedures






Know your application
Don’t forget the past lessons
Consider a hybrid approach
Fight the desire to Roll-Your-Own-DB
Start small but significant

 Two Systems

 NoSQL + SQL/RDBMS
Updates
 Real-time
 Asynchronous or Batch
NoSQL
Data
Mapper /
Translato r
SQL/RDB
MS

 One system does both NoSQL and
SQL
?
Relational
Graph
Key-Value
Data
Document
Column






InterSystems Caché supports SQL and NoSQL
Production NoSQL for 20+ years
APIs for .NET, Java, Perl, Python, etc.
Expanding paradigms for more use cases.
Comes the closest to approach 2
Relational
?
Graph
Key-Value
Data
Document
Column






Core of InterSystems Caché
Free for development and production
Simple APIs Java and JavaScript http://globalsdb.org
Sponsored by InterSystems
Array
?
Data
Document

 Over time I think we will see
 NoSQL features in mainstream databases
 NoSQL offerings by more commercial companies
 Dominant open source / free NoSQL projects
 New definitions of enterprise databases








Hadoop/Hbase
Cassandra
MongoDB
CouchDB
Riak
Couchbase
Neo4J









InterSystems Caché
SimpleDB
Azure Table Storage
Google App Engine Data Storage
Mark Logic Server
Infinite Graph
Riak (has open source version)
Berkely DB