Here here! I think that context is everything and the points you made
are spot on.....so why this huge interest in non-relational db's now?
I'd say it in 2 words Web 2.0 (well actually 1 word and 1integer).
Could Facebook, Twitter and any of the others have any idea of what
their db should look like or evolve to? I doubt it, and so for these
cases where the industry is not mature the non-relational makes perfect
sense. But for mature industries, then organizing the data with clearly
defined attributes and organization will give the biggest bang for the
buck to the business who's inevitably using it (and paying the bills).
It'll be interesting to see as these new industries mature and the next
generations have a better idea of what they'll be/need to do whether
there will be a migration away from the non-relational...
Anyway, just my 2 cents from a neophyte who knows just enough to be
dangerous.
Peter
Gary Mort wrote:
Ok, so since someone has been singing the praises of MongoDB, and
others have been mentioned, I figured I'd provide a contrarian view
and see if you can convince me otherwise.
I'm a big fan of relational databases. Have been using them since I
graduated from college in 1993, starting with DB2, followed with
MySQL[and boy was THAT interesting. DB2 was always like 2 years
behind all the neat features in other relational databases. Then I
went to MySQL and not only did it lack those features, it lacked a lot
of what solid, dependable DB2 had! And it was on purpose! They
deliberately choose to keep MySQL lean and mean and avoid things like
foreign keys, stored procedures, and such.]
My experience is that almost any application can be broken up and
thought of as tables. Especially in the business world, people
naturally think in terms of spreadsheets since the spreadsheet is king
there. And a spreadsheet is nothing but a table.
And by putting everything in well documented[ha ha!] tables with
consistent column and table naming schemes, even power users can use
query tools such as Navicat to build their own queries and reports
easily. So by keeping everything in a well understood industry
standard format, we lower the skill level needed to access and create
reports on the underlying data - always a good thing since I
personally hate it when someone asks me to create a report on sales
from last year "just like this other one except we need to include
wholesale prices", There is no challenge there, no fun. Just pure
grunt work.
So all this talk of moving away from SQL makes me nervous. Will
cluefull users still be able to envision the data so they can pull
reports. Heck, are there even the user friendly point and click tools
for them to do so?[Personally I never use the query builder in Navicat
and find it tedious, but I know plenty of power users who CAN do that].
To me, it looks like migrating to this new method of storing data will
end up "locking" the business data up in a format that raises the cost
to access the data. It reminds me of the way Magentoo is designed,
with those oh so cool tables for storing field values without creating
new table fields. Sure, it may make it easier to expand/change the
system, but having to do multiple joins to the same dang table to get
different pieces of data makes the data harder to get to for non
programmers!
My feeling on business data is that business data belongs TO the
business creating it. Not to some programmer who is the only one who
can access it[or worse, to some company that stores it in a
proprietary format and won't allow the data to be exported!] - so at
the moment, I'm not seeing that sort of access for data in MongoDB.
Command line pseodo queries is not enough, I want to know the data is
easy to get out for a power user - not me.
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