SQL and NoSQL

This is just a note on NoSQL.

The company I worked with many years ago had a discussion among the developers and managers on how they would port their code base that managed and queried much data in the company's core business from using a B-tree library to a relational database. It was compelling that a relational database would offer much advantage of the B-tree library -- SQL is widely supported in many languages and platform, the database engine would actually use a B+ tree for efficient query of the data, and the relational databases can also manages transactions and ensures integrity constriants.

Well, the tide is now turned. Data management based on key-value stores, mostly using hash table or tree structures to ensure efficient query becomes popular again. The development of network applications appears to pose a serious challenge to relational database business and NoSQL is gaining momentum. NoSQL aappears to threat some traditional database company's profit margin. There have been many discussions about NoSQL and relatinoal database management systems (RDBMS) powered by SQL, such as,

• SQL databases v. NoSQL databases in CACM
• Scalable SQL and NoSQL data stores in ACM SIGMOD Record
• Will NoSQL Databases Live Up to Their Promise? in IEEE Computer
• and the discussions here, here, and here.

You can find more by do a search in Google Scholar or just a Google search. It appears that it is not that NoSQL can do something RDMBS cannot, rather it is that NoSQL has successfully created some an excellent APIs and platforms that work well on a few special and popular set of on-line applications.

Many NoSQL engines are available. The news article cited above mentionds MongoDB that has a good and interactive tutorial on their website; by the way, the language used in the tutorial is JavaScript whose popularity, in my opinion, an exellent footnote on the increasing popularity of NoSQL -- well, is it the same set of online applications that also helped the increased popularity of JavaScript?