Look Ma! NoSQL!

There has definitely been more chatter about NoSQL in the Boston area lately. I hear there is a group forming around NoSQL ( I will post more details when I get them ). There were some NoSQL folks at the recent Cloud Camp which I was not able to attend (damn!).

My views on NoSQL are unchanged from an earlier post on the subject. I think there are some genuine issues about database scaling that are being addressed through a variety of avenues (packages, tools, …). But, in the end, the reason that SQL has survived for so long is because it is a descriptive language that is reasonably portable. That is also the reason why, in the data warehousing space, you have each vendor going off and doing some non-SQL extension in a totally non-portable way. And they are all going to, IMHO, have to reconcile their differences before the features get wide mainstream adoption.

This morning I read a well researched blog post by BJ Clark by way of Hacker News. (If you don’t use HN, you should definitely give it a try).

I strongly recommend that if you are interested in NoSQL, you read the conclusion section carefully. I have annotated the conclusion section below.

“NoSQL is a great tool, but it’s certainly not going to be your competitive edge, it’s not going to make your app hot, and most of all, your users won’t give a shit about any of this.

What am I going to build my next app on? Probably Postgres.

Will I use NoSQL? Maybe. [I would not, but that may just be my bias]

…

I might keep everything in flat files. [Yikes! If I had to do this, I’d consider something like MySQL CSV first]

…

If I need reporting, I won’t be using any NoSQL.

…

If I need ACIDity, I won’t use NoSQL.

…

If I need transactions, I’ll use Postgres.

…”

NoSQL is a great stepping stone, what comes next will be really exciting technology. If what we need is a database that scales, let’s go make ourselves a database that scales. Base it on MySQL, PostgreSQL, … but please make it SQL based. Extend SQL if you have to. I really do like to be able to coexist with the rich ecosystem of visualization tools, reporting tools, dashboards, … you get the picture.