The signal-to-noise ratio in the NoSQL world has made it hard to figure out what’s going on, or even who has something new. For all the talk of performance in the NoSQL world, much of the most exciting part of what’s new is really not about performance at all.

Take for example, MongoDB, which has a really great data model and MapReduce has a very handy scripting language. These are genuine and probably long-lasting contributions. Their innovation is all about finding a new language to use for interacting with data. They are about NoSQL.

The confusion comes, for me, when we get to the performance side of the equation. I explore this in detail in an article I did for Datanami recently – http://www.datanami.com/datanami/2012-05-22/the_sound_and_the_nosql_fury.html.

NoSQL and NewSQL database technologies pose a long-term competitive threat to MySQL’s position as the default database for Web applications, according to a new report published by 451 Research.

The report, MySQL vs. NoSQL and NewSQL: 2011-2015, examines the competitive dynamic between MySQL and the emerging NoSQL non-relational, and NewSQL relational database technologies.

It concludes that while the current impact of NoSQL and NewSQL database technologies on MySQL is minimal, they pose a long-term competitive threat due to their adoption for new development projects. The report includes market sizing and growth estimates, with the key findings as follows:

• NoSQL software vendors generated revenue* of $20m in 2011. NoSQL software revenue is expected to rapidly grow at a CAGR of 82% to reach $215m by 2015.

• NewSQL software …

MongoDB Backup types and strategies are neatly explained in its documentation, which you can check here. In case you are not familiar with MongoDB backup types and strategies, please have a look at its documentation.

What I am describing here is a simple script which we are using since months to take MongoDB backup and transfer it over to our Backup server. Here are few things its doing:

• As we have multiple MongoDB Replica Sets, the script identify current replica set and check whether current server is Master or Slave, exit if its Master. We take backup only from Slave host.
• Take Backup using mongodump command.
• Upon successful completion of dump, transfer that to our Backup server. Ensure that ssh key based authentication is setup between both servers to implement seamless and secure transfer. It creates new directory based on …

A few weeks ago I blogged about the HTTP JSON api in Drizzle. (See also a small demo app using it.) In this post I want to elaborate a little on the design decisions taken. (One reason to do this is to provide a foundation for future work, especially in the form of a GSoC project.)

Looking around: MongoDB, CouchDB, Metabase

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Log Buffer Editions are marching along, and this Log Buffer #268 is once again all about Oracle, MySQL, and SQLServer plus some peeks at some of other glittering database technologies like PostgreSQL and DB2. Sit back and enjoy. Oracle: Martin has produced another scenario based blog post about Shrinking Tables to Aid Full Scans. What [...]

Schema-free NoSQL Data

Update – the webinar replay is now available from here.

On Thursday, I’ll be presenting a webinar on NoSQL (of course with a MySQL twist!) – as always it’s free to attend but you need to register here in advance. Even if you can’t attend, it’s worth registering as you’ll be sent a link to the replay and the charts. The session will introduce the concepts and motivations behind the NoSQL movement and then go on to explain how you can get most of the same benefits with MySQL (including MySQL Cluster) while still getting the RDBMS benefits such as ACID transactions.

The …

MySQL Cluster Performance Tuning ——————————————- In this session we will look at different tuning aspects of MySQL Cluster. As well as going through performance tuning basics in MySQL Cluster, we will look closely at the new parameters and status variables of MySQL Cluster 7.2 to determine issues with e.g disk data performance and query (join) [...]

Using and benchmarking Galera in different architectures ———————————————————- What I was interested most during the second day was again, synchronous replication and Replication solutions provide from Continuent. The first I attend in the day was the Galera one, done Henrik and Alexey. The presentation was going to talk about: “We will present results from benchmarking [...]

A panel on “Future Perfect: The Road Ahead for MySQL“, by Brian Aker (HP), Paul Mikesell (Clustrix), Sundar Raghavan (Amazon), Slavik Markovich (McAffee), and Ori Hernstadt (Akiban).

If there’s one common theme to this panel and  this whole conference, it’s: “We’re hiring!” It is amazing how much talent there is at the conference this year, and yet, it isn’t enough. Pythian is hiring as well of course: http://bit.ly/pythianjobs.

There was an interesting distinction between the mindset of Oracle and of MySQL made by Brian Aker: database as a service, which is something MySQL seems to be getting to. It comes with its own problems, especially around trust levels, which will lead to more thinking around data security (rather than just database security).

MySQL vs. NoSQL. Different Tools for Different Jobs …

Since the famous conjecture by Eric Brewer and proof by Nancy Lynch et al., CAP has given the world countless learned discussions about distributed systems and many a well-funded start-up.  Yet who truly understands what CAP means?  Even a cursory survey of the blogosphere shows profound disagreement about the meaning of terms like CP, AP, and CA in real systems.  Those who disagree on CAP include some of the most illustrious personages of the database community.

We can therefore state with some confidence that CAP is confusing. Yet this observation itself raises deeper questions.  Is CAP merely confusing?  Or is it the case that as with other initially accepted but now doubtful ideas like the Copernican …