What To Choose SQL, NoSQL OR BOTH
Before jumping into databases, one has to understand why we need to use databases in the very first place. Our future is dependent on Data; we can do anything we want with the help of data. Most of our economy is based on the data; we can predict any medical conditions with the help of the right data.
Why Do We Need A Database?
When you have some data you need to store somewhere; the data can be anything. Let’s consider your phone, you have mp4, videos, pdfs, docs, etc.
Let’s consider that you have a large amount of customer data, so you open an excel sheet and try to write down all the data about the customers and that is your database.
So, when you think about databases, then I’m sure you can’t think of anything but a traditional excel sheet.so there is not a problem it’s the perfect approach to store data but think about there are millions of records, now if you want to find an in-between record then you have to scroll up to the record which is not a feasible solution, now consider by mistake you enter redundant record multiple times then how to manage these types of problems.
The examples mentioned are the perfect examples of databases, but there are some essential aspects as mentioned like size, accuracy, redundancy and most important is security where we cannot risk too.
So to overcome these types of problems; we have a new structure database system, we all heard names like SQL, MySQL, oracle, mongo, Cassandra and all.
Database
A Database is a software where we can store large amounts of data effectively with no redundancy and provide more security.
With the use of this, we can overcome all the problems which we have with traditional methods.
It’s the things you can’t see that is going on in the background; the security, the enforced integrity of the data, the ability to get to it fast and get to it reliably, the robustness; serving lots of people at the same time and even correctly survive crashes and hardware issues without corrupting the data.
There are plenty of database systems, but mostly in web development, we use relational (SQL) and NoSQL database management systems.
So just for an overview, the database is a collection or a set of tables where each table stands for individual entities of your data like if you have an e-commerce system then there are a different kind of entities like customers, products, categories, analytics, reports, commissions, etc. so, the database is nothing but a grouping of these kinds of entities.
SQL
SQL is a Structured Query Language database management system. Where we can store data in a very structural way. We have a schema of data, we have our own rules to define data,
SQL is the relational database, where we can use view, join, triggers, store procedures, functions, and inbuilt control structure, normalization. These all are the kind of design patterns that we can use to structure our data.
View
It is a kind of virtual table where we can’t store data but it displays data stored in other tables.
Triggers
It is itself explainable when we want to fire something on change of some data then we have to set triggers, so the trigger will fire automatically where they need.
Join
There are relations like one product has multiple reviews, so reviews and product is a different kind of entities and we have to join these entities via some mechanism and this mechanism is called join.
Control structure
We can use if-else, switch-case and we can use loops too.
Normalization
it is a kind of procedure where we get data in a more unique way and when we go with more normalization then we get less amount of data redundancy. When we go more deeper into normalization, then we tend to get more number of unique records and totally normalize data there is no redundancy at all.
NoSQL
NoSQL is a direct approach to databases that represents an alternative to traditional relational database management systems (RDBMS) which comes in a plenty of data model categories. A few of its examples are document, key-value, wide-column, and graph. These examples provide flexible logic and ability to easily scale with huge amounts of data along-with user loads.
There are different kinds of NoSQL databases like documents, key-value pairs, wide-column stores and graph databases.
Documents
This will store data in documents similar to JSON objects.
Pairs of fields and values will be stored in each document. There are many varieties of values like strings, numbers, booleans, arrays, or objects. According to db-engines MongoDB is the best example of a document database.
Key-value Pair
There are a few identical types of DBs where each and every item consists of keys and values. A value can normally only be retrieved by attributing its value, hence learning how to query for a key-value pair is almost simple. Basically it is used to store a large amount of non-relational data not to perform complex calculations. The best example of a document database is Redis and DynamoDB.
Wide-column stores
Wide-column stores will be easy for you to establish what it is as it is used to store large amounts of data. This helps treasure data in the form of tables, rows, and dynamic columns. Wide-column stores implement extensive relational databases as each row isn’t required to consist of the same columns. Amongst many wide-column stores, cassandra and Hbase are the two most popular ones.
Graph
This will store data in nodes and edges patterns like nodes stores entities data and edges shows relations between the entities. Neo4j and JanusGraph are examples of graph databases.
So there are relations in NoSQL as well and they provide more types of databases which actually can help to solve the problems, which can be solved by sql too.
Conclusion
In mysql 5.7 they provide json datatype to store the data. Oracle also stores the json objects. They also now provide better functions as well to retrieve data efficiently.
So the question is what and how to choose the correct database.actually it’s up to your application if its need more relations then use you can go with sql, if its need large data then go with nosql, and if its need good relations with large data then can you think about sql with nosql? Yes, why not because the sql is traditional database management systems and nosql is modern database management systems.
What are your thoughts on using traditional thinking with the modern approach?
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References:
https://www.mongodb.com/nosql-explained
https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/ADXDB/json.htm#ADXDB6371
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/json-function-reference.html
