4 ms·

For someone who knows nothing about NoSQL and decent with MySQL, can someone give a brief Idiot's overview of how NoSQL works? If I add a record in say a table

by zaidf 17y ago

For someone who knows nothing about NoSQL and decent with MySQL, can someone give a brief Idiot's overview of how NoSQL works? If I add a record in say a table named "news", where is the data stored? If I need to do a search by news id or description, what's the front-end api like and what happens at the backend when the api is called?

nreece 17y ago
Have a read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL
hachiya 17y ago
You can try MongoDB and Redis in your browser, with these excellent interactive tutorials: http://try.mongodb.org/ http://try.mongodb.org/ http://try.redis-db.com/ http://try.redis-db.com/ The above site has been discussed today on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1181714 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1181714
- lurkerperpetual 17y ago
  the mongo shell above needs some Stop Eval/Reset button as it can get into a non-responsive state after a bad parse > db.scores.find({'sdf':) >> }) also no copy paste in the browser version AFAICT
ronnier 17y ago
This gives a little background and might help answer some of your questions (I have similar questions to yours): http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=24413138919 http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=24413138919
code_duck 17y ago
There isn't an answer that fits all of the different systems called 'NoSQL'. While you can count on any common RDBMS to be accesible through SQL, there is not a 'NoSQL' language or specification. In general, access is somewhat like using an ORM. The data is stored in files of a special format, just like an SQL database.
thinker 17y ago
I'm new to this myself but I'll attempt an explanation. Then someone can correct me if needed :) The basic idea is that data is stored as key > value. You can sort of relate it to the MySQL practice of denormalization and storing a bunch of data from different tables as an array in one cell. You don't want to (or can't) do joins because data is not normalized, but instead have to process the results you would want separately in a batch process called map/reduce. It all boils down to this one fact: NoSQL is write heavy in order to improve read performance. Because your data is in multiple places and you are doing batch processing to get the right format/calculated data then you are saving time when the user requests it from you. This is one of the reasons its good for scalability. The other reason seems to be that denormalized data is easier to scale out then normalized. You should also look up CAP theorem and NoSQL. A few links that I've been saving to teach myself: - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1189911/non-relational-database-design http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1189911/non-relational-da... - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170152/nosql-best-practices http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170152/nosql-best-practi... - http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7579/1.html http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7579/1.html - http://blogs.computerworld.com/15510/the_end_of_sql_and_relational_databases_part_1_of_3 http://blogs.computerworld.com/15510/the_end_of_sql_and_rela...
jbellis 17y ago
NoSQL is a broad term. Overview: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2009/11/09/nosql-ecosystem/ http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2009/11/09/nosql-ecosyste...
richardw 17y ago
SQL is relational. DB's that fall into the NoSQL camp relax the relational integrity constraints to get performance and scaling benefits. Think BASE (Basically Available, Soft state, Eventual consistency) instead of ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability).
- jbellis 17y ago
  ebay's paper on BASE: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1394128 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1394128 (I believe this is where the term originated)
buro9 17y ago
I would very seriously recommend reading the journal paper on Amazon Dynamo which is the predecessor to Apache Cassandra: http://s3.amazonaws.com/AllThingsDistributed/sosp/amazon-dynamo-sosp2007.pdf http://s3.amazonaws.com/AllThingsDistributed/sosp/amazon-dyn... PS: Why aren't we in the habit of citing papers like this? So many links are to websites rather than direct sources, and the info in papers is usually highly readable and extremely informative about the details.
- vog 17y ago
  I agree so much! Most blogs fail to sumarize such papers properly. And if I want a summary or introduction, I can get find those in the papers, too. The same with RFCs and W3C documents. All that stuff is written very well, from the technical view as well as regarding their readability. Why putting a layer of blogs and websites around them, which actually lower the perceived quality? Also, I'm frequently annoyed by articles that write about what some other people (e.g. RMS) wrote. These aren't much shorter than the source article, and aren't written nearly as clear as the original. I appeciate it when an author just links to the source and elaborates on that topic, stating his own opinion, and perfers to quote rather than to paraphrase what's already clearly written in the source article.
- jbellis 17y ago
  http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/ArchitectureInternals http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/ArchitectureInternals links some other papers that influenced our design too. But yeah, Dynamo is the most important of those.

by zaidf 17y ago

nreece 17y ago

Have a read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL

hachiya 17y ago

You can try MongoDB and Redis in your browser, with these excellent interactive tutorials: http://try.mongodb.org/ http://try.mongodb.org/ http://try.redis-db.com/ http://try.redis-db.com/ The above site has been discussed today on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1181714 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1181714

lurkerperpetual 17y ago
the mongo shell above needs some Stop Eval/Reset button as it can get into a non-responsive state after a bad parse > db.scores.find({'sdf':) >> }) also no copy paste in the browser version AFAICT

ronnier 17y ago

This gives a little background and might help answer some of your questions (I have similar questions to yours): http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=24413138919 http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=24413138919

code_duck 17y ago

There isn't an answer that fits all of the different systems called 'NoSQL'. While you can count on any common RDBMS to be accesible through SQL, there is not a 'NoSQL' language or specification. In general, access is somewhat like using an ORM. The data is stored in files of a special format, just like an SQL database.

thinker 17y ago

I'm new to this myself but I'll attempt an explanation. Then someone can correct me if needed :) The basic idea is that data is stored as key > value. You can sort of relate it to the MySQL practice of denormalization and storing a bunch of data from different tables as an array in one cell. You don't want to (or can't) do joins because data is not normalized, but instead have to process the results you would want separately in a batch process called map/reduce. It all boils down to this one fact: NoSQL is write heavy in order to improve read performance. Because your data is in multiple places and you are doing batch processing to get the right format/calculated data then you are saving time when the user requests it from you. This is one of the reasons its good for scalability. The other reason seems to be that denormalized data is easier to scale out then normalized. You should also look up CAP theorem and NoSQL. A few links that I've been saving to teach myself: - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1189911/non-relational-database-design http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1189911/non-relational-da... - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170152/nosql-best-practices http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2170152/nosql-best-practi... - http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7579/1.html http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7579/1.html - http://blogs.computerworld.com/15510/the_end_of_sql_and_relational_databases_part_1_of_3 http://blogs.computerworld.com/15510/the_end_of_sql_and_rela...

jbellis 17y ago

NoSQL is a broad term. Overview: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2009/11/09/nosql-ecosystem/ http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2009/11/09/nosql-ecosyste...

richardw 17y ago

SQL is relational. DB's that fall into the NoSQL camp relax the relational integrity constraints to get performance and scaling benefits. Think BASE (Basically Available, Soft state, Eventual consistency) instead of ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability).

jbellis 17y ago
ebay's paper on BASE: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1394128 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1394128 (I believe this is where the term originated)

buro9 17y ago

I would very seriously recommend reading the journal paper on Amazon Dynamo which is the predecessor to Apache Cassandra: http://s3.amazonaws.com/AllThingsDistributed/sosp/amazon-dynamo-sosp2007.pdf http://s3.amazonaws.com/AllThingsDistributed/sosp/amazon-dyn... PS: Why aren't we in the habit of citing papers like this? So many links are to websites rather than direct sources, and the info in papers is usually highly readable and extremely informative about the details.

vog 17y ago
I agree so much! Most blogs fail to sumarize such papers properly. And if I want a summary or introduction, I can get find those in the papers, too. The same with RFCs and W3C documents. All that stuff is written very well, from the technical view as well as regarding their readability. Why putting a layer of blogs and websites around them, which actually lower the perceived quality? Also, I'm frequently annoyed by articles that write about what some other people (e.g. RMS) wrote. These aren't much shorter than the source article, and aren't written nearly as clear as the original. I appeciate it when an author just links to the source and elaborates on that topic, stating his own opinion, and perfers to quote rather than to paraphrase what's already clearly written in the source article.
jbellis 17y ago
http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/ArchitectureInternals http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/ArchitectureInternals links some other papers that influenced our design too. But yeah, Dynamo is the most important of those.