[BangPypers] NoSQL (was: BangPypers meeting February 2011)

[Noufal Ibrahim]

On Sun, Feb 13 2011, Santosh Rajan wrote:

> Google has BigTable as its nosql implementation. You would think that,
> for a mission critical massive scale operation like Google adwords,
> Google uses BigTable right? Wrong! They use MySQL.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdWords#Technology
>
> Google see's so much value with what works, that in fact they submit
> patches to MySQL, for any large scale problem they faced.
>
> Understanding that your job is "to get the job done", and new fangled
> stuff is simply not worth the risk, when postgresql or MySQL can get
> the job done, will take you a long way towards database zen.

RDBMS and document stores optimise for different things[1]. This diagram
shows where these different systems fall
http://guide.couchdb.org/editions/1/en/consistency.html#cap

Shoehorning an application that would best work with an RDMBS (and all
the things that it offers) to work with a document store is folly.

It's equally dumb to force something that's a natural fit for a document
store to use an RDMBS.

Google used mySQL for adwords because they needed what it offered. 
They use BigTable for a number of other products because it's a better
fit over there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigTable#History

I'm new to the whole NoSQL thing but it offers new ideas and I think
dismissing them as "new fangled stuff" that's "not worth the risk" is
myopic.



[...]



Footnotes: 
[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem

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