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Stop calling me NoSQL

blog.dhananjaynene.com

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Re: Stop calling me NoSQL

#13

Post by ynniv »

The centerpiece of relational databases is reliably joining tables. NoSQL databases remove this constraint for scalability and schema flexibility, so how about NoJOIN?

Re: Stop calling me NoSQL

#14

Post by scott_s »

vicaya wrote: post #5
tmountain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might be a misnomer in that NoSQL in the general sense describes a set of technologies acting as value stores rather than a standardized language for accessing said values.

Native storage query language implies using native i.e., non-standardized query language and API. It's an categorical acronym like AJAX.

There's a difference between SQL and RDBMS. One can interact with a relational database using a "non-standardized query language and API." Part of the problem is that people are conflating the language abstraction of SQL with the physical relationship of the data.

Re: Stop calling me NoSQL

#15

Post by scott_s »

davidmathers wrote: post #10

it seems like you’re looking for realistically structured data, not data twisted to fit a formula convenient for mathematicians. The appropriate words here are "logical" and "physical" not "real" and "unreal". A relation is a logical data structure. Hash tables, trees, and graphs are all physical data structures. Another accurate thing to say is that hash tables, trees and graphs are all "pointer-based databases" and…

I think "graph database" is probably the best term I've heard so far.

Re: Stop calling me NoSQL

#16

Post by antirez »

dnene wrote: post #8
antirez wrote: post #3

We should be very happy that somebody invented the "NoSQL" name. Once things have a name people can start to talk about this things, and the ideas will move faster. This recent hype about the NoSQL stuff was only possible because there was a name :)

The NoSQL hype happened because people wanted to explore and promote alternatives. The NoSQL name happened since there was a need to provide a moniker to the alternatives. Since this was a hype and movement based on otherwise real need, it is likely to have happened even if the name was something completely different say FreeQL (or whatever other catchy name). The post isn't arguing there shouldn't be a name. All it…

Yes indeed, I totally agree that there is a feedback. Something starts to be interesting, then people start to talk about this thing and it's comfortable to name it in some way. Then some name will arise and the discussion will move even faster. Eventually the field gets names for every important concept, and so on...

Still there is something "magic" in this process. Once you get a name for one thing, it starts to get much more obvious. For instance think at the "web 2.0" or "Ajax" cases. NoSQL, in the name itself, is the negation of something else, and this allowed to collect a number of different projects under this name.

Re: Stop calling me NoSQL

#18

Post by prodigal_erik »

davidmathers wrote: post #10

it seems like you’re looking for realistically structured data, not data twisted to fit a formula convenient for mathematicians. The appropriate words here are "logical" and "physical" not "real" and "unreal". A relation is a logical data structure. Hash tables, trees, and graphs are all physical data structures. Another accurate thing to say is that hash tables, trees and graphs are all "pointer-based databases" and…

Surrogate keys are very common in real-world relational databases. If an order has a CUSTOMER_ID which was generated mechanically, appears in exactly one tuple of the CUSTOMERS relation, and has no other assigned meaning, isn't it just a pointer to that tuple?
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