From the Editors: Defining NoSQL to avoid the hype

By SD Times Editorial Board

September 28, 2012 — (Page 1 of 3)
This has gone too far. NoSQL, as a term, has morphed from a vague term about new-world, highly scalable, schemaless data stores into an even vaguer term that now means “any data store that is non-relational.” That's just too much. While innovation in the world of databases wasn't exactly common over the past decade, the now breakneck pace of database projects around the globe has left many wondering what to call all of these new systems. Thus, NoSQL, as a term, has been muddied by all the additional innovation in the world of storing data.

Take Neo Technologies, for example. This graph database has been lumped in with the NoSQL crowd, as have other graph, time series and object storage systems. But there's already a term for those types of databases: graphs, time series and object stores!

To better serve our readers, SD Times is defining the term “NoSQL” to refer to only to highly scalable data stores designed for fast distribution of large datasets across clusters of commodity hardware. We'll stop short of saying they must include key-value stores, and we will leave some of the ambiguity between the document storage databases.

It is certainly time for some NoSQL belt tightening. If you are a database software maker, and your database doesn't fall under this definition, don't panic. Instead, find a better term for your marketing department to use. Considering the competitive state of the NoSQL market, better to avoid the term entirely.

Related Search Term(s): COBOL, NoSQL

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Comments

10/15/2012 05:04:36 PM EST

Et tu, Brute? I can understand non-technical people believing that Y2K was a non-issue, but I expect a whole lot more from people who SHOULD know better. Y2K looked like a non-issue because of the fantastic work done by thousands of programmers who combed through code and data and fixed them to be Y2K-compliant. Your opinion piece is a slap in the face to these people. Shame on you.

United StatesBill Winett