Startups should use a relational database
raycmorgan.com
Startups should use a relational database
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Re: Startups should use a relational database
#2I'm totally with you. We've experienced to have Object database or XML database and NoSQL database. Now we understand that relational database is just the right way to go for web applications, because it deals with structured data so well, keeps querying and sorting, filtering seamlessly and effortlessly. It's a must.
It is the same thing for choosing Linux distribution and JDK mode. See the references here:
http://bingobo.info/blog/table-of-contents.jsp
BTW, your title should have "relational" instead of "relation".
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#3Startups should use the right tool.
A relational database might be just as wrong as a nosql one if all you need is redis.
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#4Depends what your startup is doing. If you are only using your database to store some basic transactions, then a relational database is a very good fit. This is really the case for most startups tackling common problems. However, if your startup is tackling a problem with unique technical challenges, then you can't just ignore the issue. For example, a geo-location startup tracking the location in real time of users with a free app is simply not going to be able to use a relational database.
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#5Depends what your startup is doing. If you are only using your database to store some basic transactions, then a relational database is a very good fit. This is really the case for most startups tackling common problems. However, if your startup is tackling a problem with unique technical challenges, then you can't just ignore the issue. For example, a geo-location startup tracking the location in real time of users…
> For example, a geo-location startup tracking the location in real time of users with a free app is simply not going to be able to use a relational database.
Why not?
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#6A blog post titled "Startups should use NoSQL databases" in 3, 2, 1, ...
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#7Don't they? For some tasks relational databases are good, for some they are worse. Call me captain.
However relational databases will have hard time with big data because your dataset is bigger than your database and you have no relational integrity.
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#8He forgot one of the very important reasons to use (some) NoSQL databases: high availability. Relational database systems are very poor at providing that. Most often the availability options are limited to resistance to node failures. RDBMSes have several SPOFs and must use failover which is not dependable, hard to test, and in many times needs manual intervention. Forget resistance to network partitions.
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#9One thing that could likely get you fired rather quickly is running analytics on your live transactional system. Yes, your business needs to make decisions based on data, this is not terribly new. To think that you only have one data store is a bit short-sighted.
Many businesses (including startups) have moved to using document stores for high read environments and scraping nightly drops to their backend analytics systems. This is smart - you don't want to run summing/aggregation on a live transactional system for (hopefully) obvious reasons.
EDIT: it's also worth noting that map/reduce is typically much more powerful when aggregating large datasets. When trying to run analytics on top of a transactional system, developers like Ray here would end up with multiple joins and groupings - all of which slow everything down. Map/reduce certainly isn't perfect, but the author dismisses it as difficult witchcraft when, in practice, parallel execution of MR queries can greatly decrease resources and time to information.
I sort of think we've moved beyond this discussion.
Re: Startups should use a relational database
#10He forgot one of the very important reasons to use (some) NoSQL databases: high availability. Relational database systems are very poor at providing that. Most often the availability options are limited to resistance to node failures. RDBMSes have several SPOFs and must use failover which is not dependable, hard to test, and in many times needs manual intervention. Forget resistance to network partitions.
Rarely matters for a startup.