SQL vs. NoSQL Databases: What’s the Difference?

When we speak about databases, you can choose from few options. SQL vs NoSQL is the battle that is going on for a while among the people.

If you are also wondering which is better or you just want to see the contrast of SQL vs. NoSQL Databases, this is at the right place. We will see all the things that you need to know about these two.

Quick Battle of SQL vs. NoSQL Databases

Before we get into an in-depth battle. We will see the quick battle of SQL vs. NoSQL Databases. The main differences between these databases are following.

• SQL is a relational database whereas NoSQL is a non-relational database. SQL is exact and ordered whereas a NoSQL is more focused on the documents. It doesn’t store data in an ordered form.
• As you might have guessed, SQL is based on tables whereas non-relational database is based on documents.
• Relational databases are vertically scalable whereas non-relational databases are horizontally scalable.
• A schema of SQL is fixed and of NoSQL is dynamic.
• If you want hierarchical data storage, NoSQL is best suited here.
• For difficult Queries, you can always choose to go with SQL as compared to NoSQL.

Now, this was a quick battle between SQL vs. NoSQL Databases. You surely might be looking for an in-depth battle, right? Let’s begin that.

Overview

We will start with the language as this is the main aspect of SQL vs. NoSQL Databases. If you are a new developer, you might have known a lot about SQL whereas NoSQL is not much in the news, right? That’s because, for complex and simple things is used SQL. The schemas could be pre-defined and SQL can work with many languages. This makes it easy for people to understand things and work on them. For example, if you enter values from 1 to 10, they will be stored in a structured way.

Any other way, non-related Database will store the data anywhere. The data will be store anywhere if you will continue the above example. Therefore, one can create a document without defining the structure or schema. When the details are entered, it will store them anywhere. Whereas, you will have to define it if you are using SQL. It also allows you to add any file anytime as there is no proper structure to maintain.

Performance and Scalability

Very important when you are using any of the databases is performance.

If you want SQL to perform at its best, you will need a specialized database where SQL can run smoothly. However, on the other hand, NoSQL is a bit different. It uses commodity hardware to run. Therefore, it depends on the hardware and the number of servers.

Both of them have a good performance. However, it depends on the server you are using and the hardware.

If you have seen the quick battle of SQL vs. NoSQL Databases. We mentioned that related Database is vertically scalable whereas NoSQL is horizontally scalable. Now, many people are confused about this part as they have no idea what this means.

Vertical scalability simply includes all the things like CPU, RAM, and storage options such as SSD or HDD. If you want it to perform better, you will need to work on these things and improve this. Therefore, SQL is easy to scale and it will incur less cost. You can scale up the things that you need the most. That way we can see that the scalability of SQL is vertical.

We can say that NoSQL has horizontal scalability. Here, you will have to add more servers to scale it. Imagine it like building blocks, if you want to make it better, you will have to add more blocks and make it better. NoSQL uses a similar way to scale itself.

If you talk about the bigger picture, it’s easier to scale up to SQL. However, if you want to make it too big, you can surely use NoSQL here. If you have a huge dataset and want a DBMS for the same, you can use NoSQL here.

Popularity and Support

It’s important to know that what other people are doing when it comes to coding and database. Some help might need in the future if you are a newbie or an expert. Therefore, you can surely make sure that the popularity and support are great in both of them.

Talking about support and community, a great level of support is available for all that has SQL. Additionally, it’s one of the most popular DBMS that people are using. You might have surely heard about SQL but there are good chances that you might not have heard about NoSQL. Therefore, you will find great community support as well.

MySQL and PostgreSQL can be here some of examples. You might also be knowing that Oracle and Microsoft provides a server for SQL

NoSQL doesn’t have a great level of support yet. You will have to mostly depend on the community. The community is also small as compared to SQL. Therefore, it can become a quite big problem for the newbies.

There are many great examples that you might see here. You might want to check out Redis, MongoDB, Bigtable, CouchDB, HBase, and there are many other great examples in NoSQL.

Final Words: Which is Better?

If you are looking to know which is better, we have got a bit of bad news for you. It depends on what you want to do and what’s your final goal. For most people, SQL is a great choice you can go with. However, there are many instances where we can see that NoSQL is better. Therefore, you can go with anything that you want.

Are you developing a web app and need agency support? Finwin Tech works on both of this DBMS and can help you with your project. Contact us today to see how we can help.