Alternate Database Options
Every once in awhile you wake up and take notice of a trend that's been bubbling on in the background for some time. For me, today, that trend is the mainstreaming of nontraditional databases.
When I started out in IT choosing a database was easy, it was one of Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, or Informix. Sometimes DB2 was mentioned.
That's no longer the case. As great as the row-based relational model is, it doesn't work for a number of today's data problems.
- Financial companies use columnar databases for blazing-fast analytic computations
- The use of nontraditional data stores for big web sites is a recurring theme in Dare's blog
- Data now arrives in continuous streams (clicks, ticks, trades, etc) and needs to analyzed and stored appropriately
There are a lot of new products and technologies to support these new data scenarios - two blogs covering this space are: