New PostgreSQL Guns For NoSQL Market 162
angry tapir (1463043) writes "Embracing the widely used JSON data-exchange format, the new version of the PostgreSQL open-source database takes aim at the growing NoSQL market of nonrelational data stores, notably the popular MongoDB. The first beta version of PostgreSQL 9.4, released Thursday, includes a number of new features that address the rapidly growing market for Web applications, many of which require fast storage and retrieval of large amounts of user data."
next for NoSQL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice touch but too late! (Score:2, Insightful)
References, please.
I have a feeling you can't produce anyway, because relational databases are still widely used.
Re:Nice touch but too late! (Score:5, Insightful)
By "industry" you mean the 0.001% of websites that could actually benefit from NoSQL?
How many sites you visit use NoSQL? Do most webshops, blogs, news sites and forums? Does Slashdot?
Re:Going in the wrong direction (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people get overly optimistic about their start-ups or new projects. It's like planning on where to park all the beemers before you even get your first sale.
the hype (Score:5, Insightful)
As a big fan of SQL database, I've been watching this NoSQL hype for a few years now, and I'm still not impressed.
No doubt, there are a few scenarios where a conventional database isn't the best solution. But quite honestly, 90% of the people jumping on the bandwaggon would be served just as well with an SQL database - except that like so many things, you need to do it right.
I'm no database expert (but I know a couple), so my SQL isn't perfectly optimized and stuff, but even with a little bit of interest I see that putting some effort into your database and query design pays off massively.
And I've seen enough cases where someone scraped their SQL database and went NoSQL for absolutely no good reason. You think you're huge and SQL is too slow? Unless you just sold to FB or Google for a couple billions, you very likely are not as huge as you think. I'm running a PostGIS database doing fairly complex geography calculations on non-trivial datasets, and it's blazing fast, and whenever it isn't one hour with an SQL expert and some experimenting makes it so, because it always, with no exception, turns out that my SQL or my database design is at fault, not the database itself.
If you've got a billion users, I will grant you that you have special needs. But every NoSQL use I have seen has been a case of people moving database work to software code instead, mostly because programmers are plenty and cheap, while experienced database experts are not.
So I'm still amused and very little impressed, and I'm certain NoSQL will go the way of Java or every other hype ever - for a while it's everyone's darling, then people realize it still doesn't give us AI and it can't make coffee, and will start to figure out where it actually is the best solution and stop using it for everything else.
Re:Nice touch but too late! (Score:5, Insightful)
A small minority of companies, with very special needs, are using NoSql databases for a small proportion of their operations. Those companies do include some big ones, such as Google and Twitter, but still in absolute terms the numbers are small. A tiny minority of companies have moved away from relational databases altogether. But the numbers are statistically insignificant and are likely to remain so for decades. And the relational model does have some real and enduring benefits which will make it the right tool for many jobs far into the future.
Remember this is an industry that advances very slowly indeed. Your bank, and your utility companies, are still using programs written in COBOL - technology which is fifty years behind the curve.
Nice touch but too late! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know whether angry tapir knows what relational means, but I see nothing in his post IMHO suggesting he has no clue. JSON is great for storing non-relational data (hierarchies, data without fixed set of columns, ...). Not all data are purely relational, it's often a mix.
Re:next for NoSQL (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
"Popular implementations of SQL commonly omit support for basic features of Standard SQL, such as the DATE or TIME data types. The most obvious such examples, and incidentally the most popular commercial and proprietary SQL DBMSs, are Oracle (whose DATE behaves as DATETIME,[30][31] and lacks a TIME type)[32] and MS SQL Server (before the 2008 version). As a result, SQL code can rarely be ported between database systems without modifications."
That's why its cute.