Episode 123: NoSQL

Faceoff Show

Find out what NoSQL is and isnt.

News and Follow/Ups – 02:24

• Google Sunsets Translate API
  • “Why would anyone ever use your api’s again?” and Google is not your daddy
  • Could they have made it profitable though?
• Google Wallet

Geek Tools – 13:15

• Supergoop! SPF 30 Sunscreen Swipes with Zinc for Sensitive Skin
• Supergoop! SPF 30 Single-Application Individually Wrapped Sunscreen Swipes, 21-Count

Webapps – 15:22

• Kitten Image Bookmarklet – Replace a site’s images with Kittens (such as NSFW sites)
• Easy Bar Tricks – Cool tricks and sneaks to show your friends at the bar

NoSQL – 19:56

• What are they?
  • Usually don’t require fixed table structures
  • Usually used to scale horizontally
    • Add more commodity nodes as opposed to adding more resources and using expensive hardware
• Why would you use them?
  • Scalability
  • Performance
  • In certain use cases they are easier to implement
• When would you NOT use them?
  • If you don’t know ahead of time how you are going to query or data
    • Applies mainly to key-value type NoSQL
  • Usually arguments start because people think in terms of RDBMS vs NoSQL. They are usually implemented side by side for difference use cases. It is not an all or nothing.
• CAP Theorem
  • Consistency (all nodes see the same data at the same time)
  • Availability (node failures do not prevent survivors from continuing to operate)
  • Partition tolerance (the system continues to operate despite arbitrary message loss)
  • Cap Theorem says that a system can satisfy two of these but not all three.
• Popular DocDBs
  • CouchDB
    • Friendpaste
  • MongoDB
    • foursquare
    • intuit
    • shutterfly
• Key-value based
  • Redis
    • Blizzard
    • Stackoverflow
    • Github
    • Tweetdeck
  • Memcached
    • Just about everyone, although many people are moving to redis
  • Cassandra
    • Cisco
    • Cloudkick
• Column oriented
  • Google bigtable
  • Hbase
• Graphdb
  • neo4j
    • Good at multiple relationships
      • Think product categories
      • User friend follow relationships
    • Amazon