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

[Edmond Begumisa]

Ooops, big, big correction. My 1st requirement should have been...

1. ACIDic transactional concurrent persistent storage for my application  
that be _might_ later be shared with other applications, but I'm free to  
dictate how.

Very important distinction.

- Edmond  -

On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:20:38 +1100, Edmond Begumisa  
<ebegumisa@REDACTED> wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:23:50 +1100, Richard O'Keefe <ok@REDACTED>  
> wrote:
>
>> If what you need is persistent storage for a single application,
>> and you don't expect the data to outlive the application, a relational
>> database probably is not for you.
>
> Ditto!
>
> It has taken me 12 years as an SQL-RDBMS user to realise that the  
> problem was I was using the wrong class of database the whole time!  
> Silly, silly me. Square peg, round hole. (actually I started suspecting  
> this about 5 years ago.) I wonder how many more silly me's there are out  
> there?
>
> I think a major reason many assume the relational + sql solution as the  
> default answer is not because they need relational constraints per se,  
> but because they need complex querying for which it is assumed only SQL  
> can provide (and the best SQL dbs seem to be relational). My requirement  
> list was normally like this...
>
> 1. Persistent storage for my application that be _might_ later be shared  
> with other applications, but I'm free to dictate how.
> 2. Complex querying preferably with indexing.
> 3. Data unlikely to outlive my application (if it needs to, it can be  
> migrated).
> 4. Data won't fit in RAM (without hogging too much of it).
> 5. (NEW) Data can be replicated.
>
> For a long time I assumed only SQL-RDBMSs could give me these. I've  
> found, like many, that I was wrong. In retrospect, a lot of it was  
> do-as-others-do I guess. As you point out OO dbs could have given me  
> many of these. Some other alternatives were there too. I discovered  
> Btrieve about five years back and really liked it.
>
> I think what the NoSQL/kv-dbs like Couch are adding to their older OO  
> counterparts is 1 (HTTP APIs for other apps), 2, & 5.
>
> It's interesting too to observe the increasing popularity of  
> object-relational mapping layers for popular SQL-RDBMSs. Essentially  
> trying to turn RDBMSs into something closer to OO dbs. Funny that! Round  
> and round we go!
>
> - Edmond -
>


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