Comments on: On the unhelpfulness of NoSQL

By: Robert Young

Robert Young — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:33:41 +0000

NoSQL is just VSAM/IMS warmed over; the last gasp of code-oriented zealots. The SSD multi-core/processor machine running BCNF database (MySql, or otherwise, take your pick) will blow such stuff away. What some call scalable, experienced developers know to be spaghetti. Scattered data (which is all scalable is to these people) is a cure for no ill. ByteBloat is caused by this silliness, and while rust based storage is cheap, it ain’t fast or efficient.

And while I’m at it, the NoSql folk are clearly unable to comprehend the simple math required to do relational database.

And no SQL isn’t perfect, but it beats the crap out of COBOL/java/PHP/etc. And, also no, it needn’t be (nor any data language) Turing complete.

By: Roland Bouman

Roland Bouman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:13:27 +0000

@vitaly: fair enough – perhaps you are right and the term is here to stay. Let’s leave it at that.

(PS: On rereading my previous comment, I realized that my last sentence there (“I am interested in…, and I think “NoSQL” doesn’t really do justice…”) might be misinterpreted: By “NoSQL” I meant the term – not the current movement and solutions mentioned. I am quite convinced that the people that design and create things like Cassandra, MongoDB, couchDB etc. are very clever, and know exactly what they are doing and why it makes sense to do it like that.)

By: Vitaly Kushner

Vitaly Kushner — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:46:36 +0000

OK, while I agree with most of your points (its indeed young, and they are all different, yada yada yada)
But this is all irrelevant. What I’m saying is that the terms is here to stay, and I couldn’t care less for the ‘name’.
Lets see what happens…
My bet: one year from now ‘nosql’ will still be here to describe it :)

By: Roland Bouman

Roland Bouman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:32:51 +0000

@vitaly: gimme a break :)

First of all, the NoSQL term and “movement” is still so young (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL) that it seems a bit ridiculous to suggest that “everyone” knows what is and what is not covered by the term.

Second, there is no such thing as “the new breed…” etc. Rather, there are a bunch of solutions to solve problems encountered managing availability, scaleability and concurrencey of very large data stores. So far, there are a few recurring features across these solutions: “schemaless”, “non-relational” – perhaps there are more, but I think these are the most important. However, none of these features is sufficient to define these solutions, so it is reasonable to quesion whether a “NoSQL” is indeed *necessarily* non-relational, schemaless, etc. In addition, the underlying datamodels (“key-value”, “document-based”, “graph”) are quite different from one-another, and just lumping everything together using a quite broad an general similarity (“doesn’t support SQL natively”) seems kinda weak.

You may think it’s catchy – I really don’t care much about the catchiness – I am interested in the capabilities, use-cases and limitations, and I think “NoSQL” doesn’t really do justice to these interests.

By: Vitaly Kushner

Vitaly Kushner — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:03:28 +0000

my point is that at this stage everyone know that ‘nosql’ is a collective term for the new breed of scalable non-relational databases. but there is not a day comes by w/o someone complaining about the term. Realize that once something catches up it is very hard to change. Especially when you just say ‘this is bad’ w/o offering ‘something better’. And by better I don’t mean something more descriptive. You got to admit: ‘nosql’ is catchy. So unless the alternative is *at least* as catchy I think ‘resistance is futile’ :)