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Data Management: Developers Increasingly Tap NoSQL for Solutions Requiring Data Flexibility and Scalability
Over the last three years the banner of NoSQL (not only SQL) databases has flown ever higher, and the non-conventional database technology has grown a fairly large crowd of supporters, including major internet companies like Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook. NoSQL databases are non-conventional in that they don’t use SQL as a query language. While NoSQL lacks key advantages like ACID guarantees (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) and support for join operations available with standard relational databases, they more than make up for those deficiencies with speed, easy horizontal scalability, and the flexibility of not needing to use a fixed table schema to describe data.
Those differences between NoSQL and RDBMS systems rang out clearly in a recent survey made by Couchbase and described by James Phillips on his blog as to why NoSQL databases are becoming popular tools for managing certain classes of data. Developers in the survey cited the following reasons as to why NoSQL was appealing to them:
- 49 percent said that NoSQL’s flexibility of not requiring a data schema was attractive
- 35 percent said they liked the ability to easily scale-out standard relational databases was important
The Couchbase survey also found that there is a growing interest in NoSQL databases.
- 50% of organizations said that they funded NoSQL projects in 2011
- 70% of organizations with more than 250 developers are planning begin new NoSQL projects in 2012
The survey found that the most popular programming languages for interacting with NoSQL were, in decending popularity, Java, PHP and C#.
The report also found that some of the current applications of NoSQL include:
- Twitter stream analysis
- Real-time tracking of online user activity
- inventory tracking
- manufacturing automation
- insurance underwriting
- multi-call center operations
