[erlang-questions] Conceptual questions on key-value databases for RDBMs users

[Alceste Scalas]

 On Mon, 08 Nov 2010 04:16:43 +1100, "Edmond Begumisa" 
 <ebegumisa@REDACTED> wrote:
> The main reason I've switched to NoSQL (CouchDB) after many years of
> using  SQL-RDBMSs is for modeling hierarchical data. RDBMSs force you
> to do this  with relationships across different tables even when the
> data belongs to  the same domain/object -- this feels unnatural and
> results in the DB  equivalent of spaghetti code with hours staring at
> relationship diagrams.

 The relational model can express hierarchical relations.  SQL cannot
 express the whole relational algebra, but it does allow to handle
 hierarchical relations.  You can use self-referencing tables:

 CREATE TABLE hierarchy (
     id        INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
     parent_id INTEGER
               REFERENCES hierarchy(id)
               ON UPDATE CASCADE
               ON DELETE RESTRICT,
     ...
 );

 And then you could use common table expressions in queries:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_table_expressions

 Funny note: the relational model was developed 40 years ago in
 order to provide a declarative and formal method for structuring
 data, and overcome the limitations of the DBMSs of the time ---
 which were, in fact, mostly hierarchical and document-oriented,
 and required a procedural interface in order to perform queries.

 As a result, the data in hierarchical DBMSs was structured without
 formal analysis, and only considering the immediate requirements of
 the application that was going to use it.  When other applications
 needed to access the DB, or the application itself required updates
 which broke the mapping between DB objects and application objects,
 then *huge* pains would arise...

 Regards,
-- 
 Alceste Scalas <alceste@REDACTED>