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Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

blog.timescale.com

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Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#11

Post by aaron-lebo »

taeric wrote: post #8

I do find the amusing "backronym" rather hard to take at face value. I also found the old critics of SQL databases odd focus on the query language hard to take. The problem wasn't the queries, per se. The problem was the power of the queries for interactive uses and how that doesn't scale up. That is, the problem with most SQL databases is that you need some pretty specialized knowledge in order to construct good que…

The thing is ORMs have made writing easy queries easy and hard queries possible since at the very least 2005 with Rails, and they are easily extensible and composable. It's mostly a solved issue. If you want to do complex data manipulation, surprise, it takes a powerful tool. Seems a lot of the hype is the result of VC $ + naiveity/overselling about what MongoDB and co would be capable of. The marketing is natural - MongoDB made databases "easy" and easy is the only way to sell lowest common denominator tech to become a unicorn. Bad incentives for all involved.

Sql is a kind of rite of passage? If you can't learn it or can't be bothered to learn it, you don't need to go anywhere near a database because you can't be bothered to understand the right tool.

Granted, nosql has some uses, but those are few and far between and probably would have been handled more effectively and easily with old approaches like Prevlayer, but Prevlayer was a thousand lines of code and couldn't be monetized.

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#12

Post by Clubber »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #10

This was a nice read for the history. Honestly, being in a big legacy industry (Insurance), it's as though NoSQL never happened. We're too big, at least my organization, to have made the wholesale change and we've been plugging along mostly in Teradata and DB2 for a long time. Teradata in particular has performed well across a variety of use cases, its only large downside being the cost. Anyhow, only point I'd add is…

>So why not start with a relational database?

I asked the same question. The biggest reason I've heard is RDBMS's don't horizontally scale well, meaning you can't easily have 50 replicated nodes across the globe and expect it to perform well, or setup easily, because it's fairly complicated with an RDBMS. There's things like Oracle's grid or SQL's high availability clusters, but they get complicated fast, particularly when you need a bunch of nodes.

Obviously it was a solution for a very large amount of unstructured or semi-structured data that needed to be redundant across networks. With NoSQL, the key/values are a lot simpler to replicate apparantly.

It's a Google/Twitter size problem that most industries wouldn't have, but since it's the new shiny thing, you know how that goes.

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#13

Post by SmellTheGlove »

atomical wrote: post #9

Most data is relational. If you put relational data in a NoSQL database you end up writing an API that is similar to SQL.

Yup, and you move data logic from a stable, baked solution (your RDBMS of choice) to the application layer. Best case, you end up with something as well-implemented as SQL, but you're maintaining it as part of the app logic. Might as well let the database do it.

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#14

Post by Clubber »

atomical wrote: post #9

Most data is relational. If you put relational data in a NoSQL database you end up writing an API that is similar to SQL.

Most structured data is relational. If you include data like (someone else's) web site content, images, sound files, video files, etc, it's a different picture (pardon the pun).

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#15

Post by krf »

nextInt wrote: post #2

Lol SQL is making a comeback? It never left.

It only left in terms of attention from startups I suppose. I also disagree with the reason the article suggested - SQL could not handle the loads. My opinion is that startups simply liked the idea of not having a schema as it fit their agile approach. So, they went NoSQL because it allowed them to get going faster and change easier.

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#16

Post by tomnipotent »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #10

This was a nice read for the history. Honestly, being in a big legacy industry (Insurance), it's as though NoSQL never happened. We're too big, at least my organization, to have made the wholesale change and we've been plugging along mostly in Teradata and DB2 for a long time. Teradata in particular has performed well across a variety of use cases, its only large downside being the cost. Anyhow, only point I'd add is…

>> Pretty sure that SELECT, FROM, WHERE will work just about anywhere

Cassandra & CQL is a prime example. CQL become the de facto interface for getting data out of Cassandra, even without the benefits of JOIN's & sets.

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#17

Post by LeoPanthera »

Clubber wrote: post #14
atomical wrote: post #9

Most data is relational. If you put relational data in a NoSQL database you end up writing an API that is similar to SQL.

Most structured data is relational. If you include data like (someone else's) web site content, images, sound files, video files, etc, it's a different picture (pardon the pun).

How is NoSQL better than simply using the filesystem?

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#18

Post by SmellTheGlove »

Clubber wrote: post #12
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #10

This was a nice read for the history. Honestly, being in a big legacy industry (Insurance), it's as though NoSQL never happened. We're too big, at least my organization, to have made the wholesale change and we've been plugging along mostly in Teradata and DB2 for a long time. Teradata in particular has performed well across a variety of use cases, its only large downside being the cost. Anyhow, only point I'd add is…

>So why not start with a relational database? I asked the same question. The biggest reason I've heard is RDBMS's don't horizontally scale well, meaning you can't easily have 50 replicated nodes across the globe and expect it to perform well, or setup easily, because it's fairly complicated with an RDBMS. There's things like Oracle's grid or SQL's high availability clusters, but they get complicated fast, particularl…

> It's a Google/Twitter size problem that most industries wouldn't have, but since it's the new shiny thing, you know how that goes.

You nailed it on both points. Very few organizations are going to need that kind of scale, but many want to think that they will!

Even when you get to horizontal scaling, you can simply replicate what needs to be replicated. Key-value is really just a subset of relational data, right? If so, I bet we can query and push only that data out across the nodes.

It's not to say non-relational models don't have a place, but they're the exception as far as I'm concerned. I prefer to start with relational and only move off of that if I can justify it. As I said upthread, though, I work in insurance and you might imagine relational works well for us.

Re: Why SQL is beating NoSQL, and what this means for the future of data

#19

Post by myrandomcomment »

I started in tech at IBM supporting the finance clients. When I moved to an ISP in the early 90s I was dumb struck by the fact that things broke and it was okay. Oh the Usenet server failed again....etc...it never sat well with me. Look SNA was complex, but uptime on the system I support was measured in decades. I have done a ton of startups since then and while I love the speed at which we move the falgility of the system always rubbed me wrong. Looking at the need for speed (mongo, et.al) was always painful. I am happy to see that rational thought is winning (which is how I see this).
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