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Technology: Simpler Databases for Web Apps
Most web sites today of any significant complexity rely on the use of a database to manage the storage and retrieval of content made available on the site. Traditional databases are generally employed to manage this data — they do the job and they work well.
But traditional databases also bring with them another level of compexity for building and maintaining the site. Traditional databases require users to be familiar with the SQL language and often bring with them a lot of features and functionalities that aren’t required for managing a web site. In addition, popular proprietary databases are not cheap and can require significant resources to administer.
Some are proposing that databases intended to power web sites be made simpler. Amazon web services has introduced an alternative called Amazon SimpleDB. SimpleDB has no schema, automatically indexes data and provides a simple API for accessing the data.
W3C also sees benefits with a simpler approach and has proposed a standard called the WebSimpleDB API and has similarities to Amazon’s approach. It is non-SQL based and provides a way to efficiently store and retrieve key-value pairs stored in browsers. The W3C also brings along with it concepts like primary keys, transactions and entities. And some recent changes to the W3C draft now include the concept of maintaining unstructured data arranged in entities.
