International Journal of Trend in Scientific

Research and Development (IJTSRD)

International Open Access Journal
ISSN No: 2456 - 6470 | www.ijtsrd.com | Volume - 2 | Issue – 3

A Comparison between Relational Databases and NoSQL Databases

Behjat U Nisa
M.Tech
Tech Scholar, Department of CSE, Swami Devi Dyal Group of Professional Institutes, Haryana, India

ABSTRACT  Consistency: ensures that the various operations in

a transaction are performed correctly, accurately.
Databases are used for storing and managing large It also ensures that no constrains on the database
amounts of data. Relational model is useful when it are violated. It ensures that the effects of the
comes to reliability but when it comes to the modern transactions done in the past should be seen in
applications dealing with large amounts of data and future transactions.
the data is unstructured; non-relational
relational models aare  Isolation: guarantees that various transactions that
usable. NoSQL databases are used to store large occur simultaneously should not affect the
amounts of data. NoSQL databases are nonnon-relational, execution of one another. It ensures that the data
distributed, open source and are horizontally scalable. available in the database after each of these
This paper provides the comparison of the relational transaction is valid and reliable.
model with NoSQL  Durability: makes sure that the transactions which
have been committed they will be stored
Keywords: Relational Model, NoSQL, ACID, BASE, permanently.
CAP
In the non-relational
relational model data is not organized in
I. Importance tables. These databases store data in various formats
like XML format or Key Value Pairs. These databases
Database is a collection of logically related data. are called the NoSQL databases. NoSQL databases
Database Management System (DBMS) is a software are more easily scalable than the relational databases
that is used to store and manage data present in a and hence can handle large amounts of data. The
database. It uses data models to show the various NoSQL data model does not ensure the ACID
wayss in which the data can be managed. Several data properties but in place of that, it guarantees BASE
models are available like the hierarchical model, the properties (Basically Available, Soft state, Eventual
network model, relational model, non non-relational consistency).It is in accordance
accordan with the CAP
model etc. Relational model has dominated the (Consistency, Availability, Partition tolerance)
industry for over four decades
ades now. In this model data theorem.
is organized
rganized into tables i.e. data is stored in rows and
columns format.. This data needs to be reliable. It thus BASE is the reverse of ACID
follows the ACID properties (Atomicity, Consistency,
Isolation and Durability) to ensure the reliability of  Basically Available: System ensures availability
of data i.e. data is made available even if multiple
data.
failures are present. This is achieved by using a
 Atomicity: means that either all occurs or nothing highly
ighly distributed approach.
occurs. It prevents partial updates to a database.  Soft State: the state of the system may change
Thus, if a transaction is left incomplete then the with time even without input, the idea of
whole transaction fails. This ensures that the data consistency is abandoned completely.
is consistent.

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Apr 2018 Page: 845
 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470
 Eventual Consistency: indicates that the system ID Name Age Semester
will be consistent over time (permanent 1001 Jane 20 First
availability). 1002 Thomas 25 Third
1003 Catherine 22 First
CAP Theorem: CAP stands for Consistency,
Availability and Partition tolerance. This theorem 1004 Joe 23 Third
states that a system can have only two out of three
properties i.e. consistency, availability, and partition- The table format is simple and easy to understand and
tolerance. use. The data can be easily inserted, updated and
deleted. Data can be accessed simultaneously by
multiple users and still data consistency is maintained.
A. Problems with Relational Databases
1. Relational databases do not support high
scalability. In other words we can say that
these databases are not capable of handling
exponential growth of data.
2. Setting up and maintaining relational
databases is expensive. Also some features of
relational databases are not used and hence
result in higher cost as well as complexity.
3. SQL can be highly complex when it comes to
working with unstructured data.
4. Since data is stored in the form of tables, data
cannot be easily encapsulated.
Fig 1. CAP Theorem. 5. In case of complex relational database systems
it becomes difficult to share information from
The relational database, NoSQL and the conclusion
one database to another.
are now elaborated in the sections that follow.
Thus, in order to solve the problems encountered non-
II. Relational Database. relational databases are used.
RDBMS is an advanced version of DBMS. It is based
III. NoSQL
on the Relational model introduced by E.F.Codd. This
model is an attempt the database structure. Relational NoSQL is a non-relational database. It means ‘Not
database is table based i.e. it consists of data arranged Only SQL’. This model gained popularity after the
in the form of rows and columns. Each row contains introduction of database as a service. NoSQL
a value of data for the corresponding column. databases are horizontally scalable databases. These
Constraints are also applied to this data. The tables are databases differ from relational databases in a number
related to one another and because of this these tables of ways. No SQL databases can handle unstructured
are also called relations. Many popular databases data such as documents, e-mail, multimedia and social
currently in use are based on the relational model. media unlike the relational databases. These databases
Some of the most popular RDBMS are Microsoft do not use tables as storage structures. They do not
SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, MYSQL etc. The relational ensure the ACID properties instead they guarantee the
model was well-suited to client-server programming. BASE properties. SQL which is used as a query
Relational databases use SQL (Structured Query language in relational databases is not used in
Language) to access the data and make changes to it. NoSQL. This database can retrieve unstructured,
The following table shows the details of a student. semi-structured as well as structured data. They
This example shows how data in a relational database provide high availability at the cost of consistency.
is stored.

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470
B. Column Oriented Databases
Column oriented databases as the name suggests store
the data in the form of columns. In column stores,
each key is associated with one or more attributes.
Column data can be written efficiently and replace old
data without altering any other columns for the rows.
It offers high scalability in data storage. Column
oriented databases are suitable for data mining and
analytic applications. Some of the column store
databases used are BigTable, Cassandra and HBase.

Fig 2. NoSQL Symbolic Representation. C. Document Store Databases

Some of the features of NoSQL are as follows: Document store databases are also known as
‘Document Oriented Databases’. The data is stored
1. Ability to scale horizontally. and organized in the form of documents. These
2. Replicate and distribute data over different documents are in some ways similar to the records in
servers. relational databases but more flexible and schema-
3. Weaker concurrency model than ACID less. The documents are in standard formats like
4. Flexible schema XML, PDF or JSON. The documents are represented
5. Efficient use of distributed indexes and RAM by a unique key which is a simple string or a URI or
6. Adding new attributes to data records path. They offer great performance. Each document
Types of NOSQL Databases: may store similar as well as dissimilar data. These
data stores are slightly more complex than the key
NoSQL databases can be classified into five types: value data stores. They can be used for content
management system and blog software. Examples of
1. Key-value store databases document databases include MongoDB, Apache
2. Column oriented databases CouchDB.
3. Document store databases
4. Graph databases D. Graph Databases
5. Object oriented databases
Graph databases store data in the form of graphs in a
Each database is individually good at dealing with schema-less manner. The graphs consist of nodes,
size and complexities. edges and properties. Nodes represent entities like
people and objects, edges represent the relationships
A. Key – Value Store Databases between these nodes and properties contain any
Key-value Store databases: The key-value data stores information pertinent to the nodes. It provides an
are simple but efficient and powerful. They allow data efficient way to store semi structured data. These
to be stored in a schema-less manner. The data as the databases are faster than the relational databases as
name suggests consists of two parts a key which is a queries are expressed as traversals. Graph databases
unique identifier to a particular data entry and a value support ACID properties. They can be used in social
that corresponds to the key. The data can be any networking applications, network and cloud
primitive of a programming language or it can be an management, bioinformatics etc. An example of graph
object. It has a simple API. It favors high scalability database is the Neo4j.
over consistency. These data stores are like hash E. Object Oriented Databases
tables where keys are used as indexes thus the query
speed is higher than a relational database. The stores Object oriented database also called OODBMS is a
can hold structured as well as unstructured data. database in which data is stored in the form of objects.
These data stores can be used to save a user’s session It is considered to be a combination of database
or user’s shopping cart. Some of key value stores principles and object oriented programming. All the
available in market are Berkeley DB, Tokyo Tyrant, features of object oriented programming i.e.
and Amazon Dynamo. encapsulation, abstraction, polymorphism and

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) ISSN: 2456-6470
inheritance are provided by the object oriented data 3) Leavitt, N.,"Will NoSQL Databases Live Up to
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