NoSQL databases are currently a hot topic in some parts of computing, with over

a hundred different NoSQL databases.

▪ Data stored in columns and tables
▪ Relationships represented by data
▪ Data Manipulation Language
▪ Data Definition Language
▪ Transactions
▪ Abstraction from physical layer
▪ Applications specify what, not how
▪ Physical layer can change without modifying applications
▪ Create indexes to support queries
▪ In Memory databases
▪ Atomic – All of the work in a transaction completes (commit) or none of it
completes
▪ Consistent – A transaction transforms the database from one consistent state
to another consistent state. Consistency is defined in terms of constraints.
▪ Isolated – The results of any changes made during a transaction are not
visible until the transaction has committed.
▪ Durable – The results of a committed transaction survive failures
▪ NoSQL stands for:
▪ No Relational
▪ No RDBMS
▪ Not Only SQL

▪ NoSQL is an umbrella term for all databases and data stores that don’t follow the
RDBMS principles
▪ A class of products
▪ A collection of several (related) concepts about data storage and manipulation
▪ Often related to large data sets
▪ Non-relational DBMSs are not new
▪ But NoSQL represents a new incarnation
▪ Due to massively scalable Internet applications
▪ Based on distributed and parallel computing

▪ Development
▪ Starts with Google
▪ First research paper published in 2003
▪ Continues also thanks to Lucene's developers/Apache (Hadoop) and Amazon (Dynamo)
▪ Then a lot of products and interests came from Facebook, Netfix, Yahoo, eBay, Hulu, IBM,
and many more
▪ Three major papers were the seeds of the NoSQL movement
▪ BigTable (Google)
▪ Dynamo (Amazon)
▪ Distributed key-value data store
▪ Eventual consistency
▪ CAP Theorem
▪ NoSQL comes from Internet, thus it is often related to the “big data” concept
▪ How much big are “big data”?
▪ Over few terabytes Enough to start spanning multiple storage units

▪ Challenges
▪ Efficiently storing and accessing large amounts of data is difficult, even more considering
fault tolerance and backups
▪ Manipulating large data sets involves running immensely parallel processes
▪ Managing continuously evolving schema and metadata for semi-structured and un-
structured data is difficult
▪ Explosion of social media sites (Facebook, Twitter) with large
data needs
▪ Rise of cloud-based solutions such as Amazon S3 (simple storage
solution)
▪ Just as moving to dynamically-typed languages (Python, Ruby,
Groovy), a shift to dynamically-typed data with frequent schema
changes
▪ Open-source community
▪ The context is Internet
▪ RDBMSs assume that data are
▪ Dense
▪ Largely uniform (structured data)

▪ Data coming from Internet are

▪ Massive and sparse
▪ Semi-structured or unstructured

▪ With massive sparse data sets, the typical storage mechanisms and access methods
get stretched
▪ Large data volumes ▪ Asynchronous Inserts &
▪ Google’s “big data” Updates
▪ Schema-less
▪ Scalable replication and
distribution ▪ ACID transaction properties
▪ Potentially thousands of are not needed – BASE
machines ▪ CAP Theorem
▪ Potentially distributed
around the world ▪ Open source development

▪ Queries need to return

answers quickly
▪ Mostly query, few
updates
Discussing NoSQL databases is complicated because there are a variety of types:

▪Sorted ordered Column Store

▪Optimized for queries over large datasets, and store
columns of data together, instead of rows
▪Document databases:
▪pair each key with a complex data structure known as a document.

▪Key-Value Store :
▪are the simplest NoSQL databases. Every single item in the database is stored
as an attribute name (or 'key'), together with its value.
▪Graph Databases :
▪are used to store information about networks of data, such as social connections.
▪ Documents
▪ Loosely structured sets of key/value pairs in documents, e.g., XML, JSON
▪ Encapsulate and encode data in some standard formats or encodings
▪ Are addressed in the database via a unique key
▪ Documents are treated as a whole, avoiding splitting a document into its constituent
name/value pairs
▪ Allow documents retrieving by keys or contents
▪ Notable for:
▪ MongoDB (used in FourSquare, Github, and more)
▪ CouchDB (used in Apple, BBC, Canonical, Cern, and more)
▪ The central concept is the notion of a "document“ which corresponds to a
row in RDBMS.
▪ A document comes in some standard formats like JSON (BSON).
▪ Documents are addressed in the database via a unique key that represents
that document.
▪ The database offers an API or query language that retrieves documents
based on their contents.
▪ Documents are schema free, i.e., different documents can have structures
and schema that differ from one another. (An RDBMS requires that each row
contain the same columns.)

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▪ Store data in a schema-less way
▪ Store data as maps
▪ HashMaps or associative arrays
▪ Provide a very efficient average running
time algorithm for accessing data
▪ Notable for:
▪ Couchbase (Zynga, Vimeo, NAVTEQ, ...)
▪ Redis (Craiglist, Instagram, StackOverfow,
flickr, ...)
▪ Amazon Dynamo (Amazon, Elsevier,
IMDb, ...)
▪ Apache Cassandra (Facebook, Digg,
Reddit, Twitter,...)
▪ Voldemort (LinkedIn, eBay, …)
▪ Riak (Github, Comcast, Mochi, ...)
▪ Data are stored in a column-oriented way
▪ Data efficiently stored
▪ Avoids consuming space for storing nulls
▪ Columns are grouped in column-families
▪ Data isn’t stored as a single table but is stored by column families
▪ Unit of data is a set of key/value pairs
▪ Identified by “row-key”
▪ Ordered and sorted based on row-key

▪ Notable for:
▪ Google's Bigtable (used in all
Google's services)
▪ HBase (Facebook, StumbleUpon,
Hulu, Yahoo!, ...)
▪ Graph-oriented
▪ Everything is stored as an edge, a node or an attribute.
▪ Each node and edge can have any number of attributes.
▪ Both the nodes and edges can be labelled.
▪ Labels can be used to narrow searches.

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▪ Issues with scaling up when the dataset is just too big
▪ RDBMS were not designed to be distributed
▪ Traditional DBMSs are best designed to run well on a “single” machine
▪ Larger volumes of data/operations requires to upgrade the server with faster
CPUs or more memory known as ‘scaling up’ or ‘Vertical scaling’
▪ NoSQL solutions are designed to run on clusters or multi-node database
solutions
▪ Larger volumes of data/operations requires to add more machines to the
cluster, Known as ‘scaling out’ or ‘horizontal scaling’
▪ Different approaches include:
▪ Master-slave
▪ Sharding (partitioning)
▪ RDBMSs are based on ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability)
properties
▪ NoSQL
▪ Does not give importance to ACID properties
▪ In some cases completely ignores them
▪ In distributed parallel systems it is difficult/impossible to ensure ACID properties
▪ Long-running transactions don't work because keeping resources blocked for a
long time is not practical
▪ Acronym contrived to be the opposite of ACID
▪ Basically Available,
▪ Soft state,
▪ Eventually Consistent
▪ Characteristics
▪ Weak consistency – stale data OK
▪ Availability first
▪ Best effort
▪ Approximate answers OK
▪ Aggressive (optimistic)
▪ Simpler and faster
A congruent and logical way for assessing the problems involved in
assuring ACID-like guarantees in distributed systems is provided by the
CAP theorem
At most two of the following three can be maximized at one time
▪ Consistency
▪ Each client has the same view of the
data

▪ Availability
▪ Each client can always read and write

▪ Partition tolerance
▪ System works well across distributed
physical networks
▪ CAP theorem – At most two properties on three can be
addressed
▪ The choices could be as follows:

1. Availability is compromised but consistency and partition

tolerance are preferred over it
2. The system has little or no partition tolerance. Consistency
and availability are preferred
3. Consistency is compromised but systems are always available
and can work when parts of it are partitioned
• Consistency and Availability is not
“binary” decision

• AP systems relax consistency in

favor of availability – but are not C A
inconsistent

• CP systems sacrifice availability for

consistency- but are not unavailable
P
• This suggests both AP and CP
systems can offer a degree of
consistency, and availability, as
well as partition tolerance
▪ There is no perfect NoSQL database
▪ Every database has its advantages and disadvantages
▪ Depending on the type of tasks (and preferences) to accomplish

▪ NoSQL is a set of concepts, ideas, technologies, and software

dealing with
▪ Big data
▪ Sparse un/semi-structured data
▪ High horizontal scalability
▪ Massive parallel processing

▪ Different applications, goals, targets, approaches need different

NoSQL solutions
▪ Where would I use a NoSQL database?
▪ Do you have somewhere a large set of uncontrolled,
unstructured, data that you are trying to fit into a RDBMS?
▪ Log Analysis
▪ Social Networking Feeds (many firms hooked in through
Facebook or Twitter)
▪ External feeds from partners
▪ Data that is not easily analyzed in a RDBMS such as time-
based data
▪ Large data feeds that need to be massaged before entry into
an RDBMS