It is important to understand that NoSQL uses a less structured approach than SQL. A NoSQL database does not require a schema as does a SQL database. Rather, NoSQL databases describe themselves – and there is no requirement for relationships between tables in all scenarios, whereas SQL is by definition relational.
Furthermore, NoSQL databases exclusively use JSON documents. It is easy to understand and self-contained. As a result, NoSQL databases are non-relational and high-performance, supporting a wide range of data models. Developers also say that NoSQL is highly resilient and easy to use. It is now also widely available to use NoSQL. A typical NoSQL database would be Amazon’s Dynamo DB, MongoDB, MarkLogic plus CloudDB and Couchbase.
What is NoSQL And How does it work
A NoSQL database is not a tabular database and handles data storage differently than a relational database. A database can be classified by its data model, and some popular types include document, graph, column, and key-value databases.
As a non-relational database, NoSQL provides a mechanism for storing and retrieving information. The process of modeling data is carried out using means which do not fall under the tabular relations associated with relational databases.
Historically, NoSQL databases have existed since the 1960s. They weren’t known as NoSQL back then; this moniker only emerged after such databases gained popularity after the year 2000. NoSQL has several critical advantages, such as flexible schemas and easy scalability, even when there are a lot of users and a lot of data.
Big Data and real-time web applications benefit from this class of databases. With time, the term ‘NoSQL’ became more widely accepted as ‘not only SQL’ instead of ‘non-SQL’. It is clear from this that NoSQL is capable of supporting SQL-like query languages.
NoSQL’s key features include simple design, seamless horizontal scalability, and granular availability control. In addition to swift operations, NoSQL also benefits from different data structures from relational databases’ defaults.
While NoSQL has several advantages (which we’ll discuss in the next section), it also has a few disadvantages. For instance, NoSQL databases are primarily designed for data storage, so they have a narrow scope. Relational databases are generally more suitable for applications such as transaction management.
Further, the lack of widely-adopted business standards for NoSQL often means that two independent database systems are unequal. It can also be difficult to manage more complex NoSQL databases due to the absence of well-known, widely used GUI mode tools. Finally, some NoSQL database systems store data as JSON, which results in very large documents.
NoSQL sometimes sacrifices consistency for speed, partition tolerance, and availability. Due to the flexibility of NoSQL data structures, these databases can be used to solve a wide variety of business challenges.
Types of NoSQL databases
There are four major types of NoSQL databases that have emerged over time:
- document databases.
- key-value databases .
- wide-column stores.
- graph databases.
A document database stores data in documents, similar to JSON objects (JavaScript Object Notation). Each document contains a pair of fields and values. Variable types include strings, numbers, booleans, arrays, and objects. A key-value database contains keys and values for each item in a database. A wide-column database contains rows, columns, and dynamic columns. A graph database stores data in nodes and edges. A node stores information about people, places, and things, while an edge stores information about the nodes’ relationships with one another.
See More: What is JavaScript – Which type of language is JavaScript?
Benefits of NoSQL databases
- It supports query language.
- Make replication easy
- Provide fast performance and horizontal scalability
- Adaptable to semi-structured, structured, and unstructured data
- It’s easy to implement
- Ensure that key developer languages and platforms are supported
- Servers don’t need to be dedicated to high performance
- Adaptable to handling big data f
- Flexible schema design
To ensure your databases are performing well, you need to monitor them regularly whether they’re relational databases or NoSQL databases. With NoSQL database management systems or monitoring tools, you can monitor database performance at scale to gain a complete picture of SQL and NoSQL databases’ performance. This improves system performance and team efficiency, and saves infrastructure costs. Moreover, tools provide comprehensive database performance analytics, a unified view of your database types and servers, meaningful summaries, weekly reports, and customized alerts.
Final Thoughts
Why do NoSQL databases matter now? In the Digital Economy – enabled by cloud, mobile, social media, and big data technologies – developers and operations need to create and maintain web, mobile, and IoT applications faster and faster. NoSQL is becoming a more popular database technology for today’s web, mobile, and IoT applications because of its flexibility and high performance.
NoSQL has been adopted by hundreds of Global 2000 companies, as well as tens of thousands of smaller companies and startups. The use of NoSQL began with a cache, proof of concept, or a small application, expanded to targeted mission-critical applications, and is now the basis for all application development.
Using NoSQL, enterprises can develop with agility and operate at any scale – and deliver the performance and availability required for Digital Economy businesses.