4 ms·

One point from the article: RDBMSs do not represent data in the same way as in the real world. This is a horrible misconception. In fact, CouchDB et al. store

One point from the article: RDBMSs do not represent data in the same way as in the real world. This is a horrible misconception. In fact, CouchDB et al. store data like we do in the real world but they certainly do not represent data as it is in the real world. That crown goes to RDBMSs. Suppose we have two physical records of a company's logo. Then the company logo changes but only one of the records is updated. That kind of error took place because the physical storage model (two places) did not correspond to the data model (one entity). That is where RDBMSs shine and CouchDB fails. RDBMSs allow data relations to be expressed and then have the DB enforce these relations. This incurrs some overhead (and I suspect, makes most web programmers think that RDBMSs are "old school") but in most cases, this overhead is paid for several times over in future data integrity.

jchrisa 18y ago
oops, commented when I meant to reply. Here goes: CouchDB is different from a relational DB in so many ways its almost silly to be doing the comparison. However, many people use and understand SQL, so we must show them what differences to expect. Your argument about normalization being more realistic has its place. CouchDB models documents, which by necessity are somewhat complete, even when taken from their original context. Document modeling is radically different from relational modeling. In document modeling, more emphasis is placed on the document life-cycle as opposed to inter-record normalization (relations). And in document modeling the client has a greater responsibility for saving data that is useful to the user, rather than asking the relational store to reconstruct the objects. I think there are a lot of uses for CouchDB alongside relational DBs, but I'm especially excited to see what kinds of crazy things people figure out how to do with p2p offline replication.
- bayareaguy 18y ago
  I'm especially excited to see what kinds of crazy things people figure out how to do with p2p offline replication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Notes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Notes

jchrisa 18y ago

oops, commented when I meant to reply. Here goes: CouchDB is different from a relational DB in so many ways its almost silly to be doing the comparison. However, many people use and understand SQL, so we must show them what differences to expect. Your argument about normalization being more realistic has its place. CouchDB models documents, which by necessity are somewhat complete, even when taken from their original context. Document modeling is radically different from relational modeling. In document modeling, more emphasis is placed on the document life-cycle as opposed to inter-record normalization (relations). And in document modeling the client has a greater responsibility for saving data that is useful to the user, rather than asking the relational store to reconstruct the objects. I think there are a lot of uses for CouchDB alongside relational DBs, but I'm especially excited to see what kinds of crazy things people figure out how to do with p2p offline replication.

bayareaguy 18y ago
I'm especially excited to see what kinds of crazy things people figure out how to do with p2p offline replication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Notes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Notes