9 ms·

I wonder how many people in the NoSQL and SQL doesnt scale crowd either have never met a truly competent, much less good DBA (trust me, they are very very rare)

I wonder how many people in the NoSQL and SQL doesnt scale crowd either have never met a truly competent, much less good DBA (trust me, they are very very rare) or decided it could not scale because they applied their programmatic and procedural logic to a tool that operates in a very different (SET based) paradigm.

callahad 17y ago
Then that's another win for many NoSQL databases -- they often operate in a way that's much more natural for developers.
- lucifer 17y ago
  Lets wait a few years until all the bells and whistles are bolted (in ad hoc, product specific manner (until someone invents ... a formal query language ;) in layers and tiers that take a NoSQL data store to a full blown database which requires management. (Didn't we go through this with the XML hype? Wasn't it the "simple" golden nail? Have you checked out the "Simple" landscape of SOAP and W[TF]S-*?) We're not living in past; its more like back to the future. (Just wait for it, and "No-NoSql" ..)
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    Just because some people can fuck up a good thing doesn't mean it isn't a good thing. XML is simple. The problem was (and is) misapplication in areas it doesn't belong. I'm sure that will happen with no-sql. No biggie.
    - keithwarren 17y ago
      Talk about mis-application; I know this is off topic but the over use of virtual machines everywhere is starting to trip me out. Why in the world would you buy a brand new machine to run your production web site and then put VMWare on it and run one machine instance?? I could understand if you buy a big powerful machine and carve it into multiple smaller machines all serving separate and unique purposes - that is a common and good use case for it but people aren't just doing that, they are taking it overboard.
      - vog 17y ago
        Using virtualization has a lot of benefits even when you have just one virtual instance. In your example, the real overkill is VMware, not virtualization per se! Instead, kernel-based virtualization such as BSD Jails, Linux-VServer or OpenVZ is the right approach. This type of virtualization comes without any performance penalties! And by using hard links, you can avoid wasting disk space, too. The benefits are better hardware abstraction, i.e. easier movement to other machines, improved backup possibilities, etc. In fact, the BSD manual recommends the usage of jails for years, if not decades. I'd say that this kind of virtualization is still underused, while inappropriate kinds of virtualization start to become overused. Maybe this is due to "successful" marketing of VMware. They promote the right techniques, but the wrong technology.
      - ytinas 17y ago
        Virtualization is good in e.g. cloud scenarios where the usage is spread out to different machines through out the day. Rather than have 10 machines averaging 5% utilization at all times you can have 1 machine with e.g. 60% utilization all the time. A win. Sadly, pointy-haired bosses have started putting developers on VMs which is exactly the opposite use case: all people loading their machines at roughly the same time (e.g. I've heard people claim that in Java 1/3rd of time is spent compiling. If you have more then 3 devs....). A fail.
      - Confusion 17y ago
        Because you can run the exact same machine instance on other hardware with VMWare, which makes you much more flexible in purchasing hardware. Because you can host the VMWare instance on a SAN and not lose it when the machine dies, which allows cheaper machines. Complete machine failover is easier.
      - vidarh 17y ago
        It allows for easy live migrations for maintenance, and allows us to build VMs that are happily 100% oblivious of the underlying hardware. While most of our servers are split into multiple VMs, we consistently deploy new hardware with VMs even if they're intended for a single function simply because of consistency and ease of maintenance.
  - halostatue 17y ago
    NoSQL datastores are the new object databases without the compile-time shackles. (This already makes them better than ODBMS failures; they're not as hard to adapt to new programming languages or frameworks.) I have believed for a very long time that you cannot be a good OO developer unless you really understand data modelling (which includes relational data modelling). There are often good reasons to break the "rules" of data normalisation (which is pretty much what NoSQL data stores do) but you shouldn't do so unless you know why you're doing this. IMO, most data is more interrelated than people think that it is, and at least having a good model of how the data is related will make your entire design better.
  - scythe 17y ago
    It's another case of "right tool for the job". If you're just looking for a data store, NoSQL may be right up your alley. If you need a query language, you may want SQL. I mean, the fact is that there are a lot of servers out there even today that are running SQL databases to be used simply as dumb data stores. It's not the most efficient coding, but it happens, at least partially because MySQL is available on every shared host and their brothers (wait, what?).
waterlesscloud 17y ago
I've always thought good DBAs were the rarest thing in the industry. And the most valuable.
- evgen 17y ago
  "Good" DBAs share digs with santa and the tooth fairy, but competent and opinionated DBAs are not as hard to find as you might think. Just whisper 'NoSQL' and they seem to crawl out of the woodwork :)
joe_the_user 17y ago
DBAs don't scale! If your tool requires people who don't exist, it might be otherwise great but you've got problems. I'm not even a NoSqlista by any mean, it just seems ironic that you are making a good for nosql - you just need programmers, not DBAs.
- coderdude 17y ago
  I'm not sure where people are getting this idea from. DBA != "Guy who works with relational databases." If you have a sufficiently large amount of data and/or a sufficiently high amount of requests for that data, you will eventually need someone to manage your data(base| store) and the accompanying cluster. Edit: Or, now the programmer is the DBA, and he still requires the skillset a DBA.
Nelson69 17y ago
The biggest SQL problems I've seen the last few years have been ORM using developers using the database as a data structure store, rather than a database. For some reason, the act of getting data in and out of a database was the "hard problem" that had to be solved. I know this sounds parochial and if you're a close to no money start-up then it might as well be Greek but there is a reason for the business tier in a 3 tier architecture, it translates transactional data in to your data structures... Done well it can scale like a mutha. I do sort of appreciate the approach of NoSQL though. Map/Reduce is a concept missing from RDBMS and it seems like it could be incredibly valuable for certain problems. There are probably other concepts that could be applied as well. At some point I see the two camps sort of merging back together. ACID is just too important.

callahad 17y ago

Then that's another win for many NoSQL databases -- they often operate in a way that's much more natural for developers.

lucifer 17y ago
Lets wait a few years until all the bells and whistles are bolted (in ad hoc, product specific manner (until someone invents ... a formal query language ;) in layers and tiers that take a NoSQL data store to a full blown database which requires management. (Didn't we go through this with the XML hype? Wasn't it the "simple" golden nail? Have you checked out the "Simple" landscape of SOAP and W[TF]S-*?) We're not living in past; its more like back to the future. (Just wait for it, and "No-NoSql" ..)
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  Just because some people can fuck up a good thing doesn't mean it isn't a good thing. XML is simple. The problem was (and is) misapplication in areas it doesn't belong. I'm sure that will happen with no-sql. No biggie.
  - keithwarren 17y ago
    Talk about mis-application; I know this is off topic but the over use of virtual machines everywhere is starting to trip me out. Why in the world would you buy a brand new machine to run your production web site and then put VMWare on it and run one machine instance?? I could understand if you buy a big powerful machine and carve it into multiple smaller machines all serving separate and unique purposes - that is a common and good use case for it but people aren't just doing that, they are taking it overboard.
    - vog 17y ago
      Using virtualization has a lot of benefits even when you have just one virtual instance. In your example, the real overkill is VMware, not virtualization per se! Instead, kernel-based virtualization such as BSD Jails, Linux-VServer or OpenVZ is the right approach. This type of virtualization comes without any performance penalties! And by using hard links, you can avoid wasting disk space, too. The benefits are better hardware abstraction, i.e. easier movement to other machines, improved backup possibilities, etc. In fact, the BSD manual recommends the usage of jails for years, if not decades. I'd say that this kind of virtualization is still underused, while inappropriate kinds of virtualization start to become overused. Maybe this is due to "successful" marketing of VMware. They promote the right techniques, but the wrong technology.
    - ytinas 17y ago
      Virtualization is good in e.g. cloud scenarios where the usage is spread out to different machines through out the day. Rather than have 10 machines averaging 5% utilization at all times you can have 1 machine with e.g. 60% utilization all the time. A win. Sadly, pointy-haired bosses have started putting developers on VMs which is exactly the opposite use case: all people loading their machines at roughly the same time (e.g. I've heard people claim that in Java 1/3rd of time is spent compiling. If you have more then 3 devs....). A fail.
    - Confusion 17y ago
      Because you can run the exact same machine instance on other hardware with VMWare, which makes you much more flexible in purchasing hardware. Because you can host the VMWare instance on a SAN and not lose it when the machine dies, which allows cheaper machines. Complete machine failover is easier.
    - vidarh 17y ago
      It allows for easy live migrations for maintenance, and allows us to build VMs that are happily 100% oblivious of the underlying hardware. While most of our servers are split into multiple VMs, we consistently deploy new hardware with VMs even if they're intended for a single function simply because of consistency and ease of maintenance.
- halostatue 17y ago
  NoSQL datastores are the new object databases without the compile-time shackles. (This already makes them better than ODBMS failures; they're not as hard to adapt to new programming languages or frameworks.) I have believed for a very long time that you cannot be a good OO developer unless you really understand data modelling (which includes relational data modelling). There are often good reasons to break the "rules" of data normalisation (which is pretty much what NoSQL data stores do) but you shouldn't do so unless you know why you're doing this. IMO, most data is more interrelated than people think that it is, and at least having a good model of how the data is related will make your entire design better.
- scythe 17y ago
  It's another case of "right tool for the job". If you're just looking for a data store, NoSQL may be right up your alley. If you need a query language, you may want SQL. I mean, the fact is that there are a lot of servers out there even today that are running SQL databases to be used simply as dumb data stores. It's not the most efficient coding, but it happens, at least partially because MySQL is available on every shared host and their brothers (wait, what?).

waterlesscloud 17y ago

I've always thought good DBAs were the rarest thing in the industry. And the most valuable.

evgen 17y ago
"Good" DBAs share digs with santa and the tooth fairy, but competent and opinionated DBAs are not as hard to find as you might think. Just whisper 'NoSQL' and they seem to crawl out of the woodwork :)

joe_the_user 17y ago

DBAs don't scale! If your tool requires people who don't exist, it might be otherwise great but you've got problems. I'm not even a NoSqlista by any mean, it just seems ironic that you are making a good for nosql - you just need programmers, not DBAs.

coderdude 17y ago
I'm not sure where people are getting this idea from. DBA != "Guy who works with relational databases." If you have a sufficiently large amount of data and/or a sufficiently high amount of requests for that data, you will eventually need someone to manage your data(base| store) and the accompanying cluster. Edit: Or, now the programmer is the DBA, and he still requires the skillset a DBA.

Nelson69 17y ago

The biggest SQL problems I've seen the last few years have been ORM using developers using the database as a data structure store, rather than a database. For some reason, the act of getting data in and out of a database was the "hard problem" that had to be solved. I know this sounds parochial and if you're a close to no money start-up then it might as well be Greek but there is a reason for the business tier in a 3 tier architecture, it translates transactional data in to your data structures... Done well it can scale like a mutha. I do sort of appreciate the approach of NoSQL though. Map/Reduce is a concept missing from RDBMS and it seems like it could be incredibly valuable for certain problems. There are probably other concepts that could be applied as well. At some point I see the two camps sort of merging back together. ACID is just too important.