The Present and Future of Database Technology

Conventional RDBMSs remained the choice of the developers and database administrators for years. The schema definition property of RDBMS makes a declarative and specific method for defining the data and queries in a database. However current scenario of technology and industry, asks for faster synchronization of instances to match the requirements rapidly. With this trend followed, RDMSs became inflexible with time due to the introduction of various cloud computing and distributed computing models.

NoSQL databases provides the rapid synchronization needs of organizations while following the relational model of databases. NoSQL database technology offers cost-effective management of data for building scaled out modern web and mobile applications. Some of the features of NoSQL database technology are:

• Scale Out: Modern day applications are based on the purpose of distributing the load accross the virtualized environment instead of deploying high capacity servers to accomodate the users. Scaling out is the term used in this context where engaging high capacity server for improving the performance of the application is not the solution instead, distributing load across the network to maintain the cost of the operation is the key for successful business process.
• No Schema Assistance: NoSQL database supports the feature of inserting the data into the database without defining a rigid schema for the instance. This enables the modification in the data format without any downtime or without disrupting the application. This imparts immense flexibility in the application and routine procedures and eventually delivers adaptability in the business for substantial benefits.
• Integrated Caching: In contrast with the conventional RDBMSs where a separate caching tier needs to be developed and maintained by an operations team, NoSQL databases provide the integrated caching system which cache the data in the system memory in order to reduce latency.
• Cost Effectiveness: While RDBMSs rely on expensive, proprietary and dedicated servers for serving the requests and storing data, NoSQL database relies on more economic shared servers. The effective cost of executing the transactions per Gigabytes of memory in NoSQL comes out to be much less than conventional RDBMSs.

The reason why NoSQL is more efficient in terms of performance as compared to RDBMSs is that relational databases follow the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability) properties of a relational model due to its table based nature. A NoSQL database does not distribute the logical entities across multiple tables instead it stores them at one location.

A NoSQL DB does not impose referencial integrity between these logical entities but only inside a single entity. This allows the distribution of data across the nodes automatically. Change management is another key advantage of NoSQL DB as it allows to change the schema of the database without unnecessary efforts or with little amount of efforts.