SqlServer, Oracle or NoSql?

PROBLEM:

What to choose, SqlServer, Oracle or NoSql?

SOLUTION:

A traditional relational database stores data in rows and columns, in recent years engineers have learned to stretch such databases across multiple servers with varying success. By contrast, a NoSQL database provides a more flexible data model, and it’s specifically built to scale across a vast number of machines.

The rub is that you can’t always slice and dice the data as easily as you can with a relational database. Generally, the “transactional semantics” of a NoSQL database are somewhat limited, and you can’t do database “joins,” where you merge data from two or more database tables.

NoSQL is a broad term, and by some counts, over 100 different outfits offer a database along these lines. Some, such as MongoDB, store data as “objects” — essentially documents — of varying sizes, while others, such as the open-source Cassandra database, developed at Facebook, store data as “key-value” pairs — i.e. “color” and “red” or “name” and “Bob.” But most of these databases are open source, and all are designed to run across a large number of low-cost machines.

Having had experience with both SQL and NoSQL, I can fairly say that they each have their strengths. For software development in general, NoSQL is hands-down the easiest to work with since there is a direct translation between programming objects and NoSQL objects (no need for custom coding of a data layer or an ORM, which is a HUGE time saver). Plus, it's easier to add in data without breaking or affecting anything or having to re-deploy the database or run scripts. it scales very easily, and requires no administration. Because NoSQL uses encapsulation in place of joins, NoSQL is generally faster. Ad-hoc reporting and data warehousing is probably the biggest downside of NoSQL DBs.

I might also add that it's very easy to get started with NoSql... In my smaller projects, I use MongoDB with C# in Windows. Here are the steps I generally take:

1. Go to www.mongodb.org and download the appropriate version (32-bit/64-bit)
2. Create a folder on your C: Drive called "data". Then create a folder under that called "db" (this is where MongoDB stores database files by default)
3. Extract the downloaded MongoDB zip file to c:\data\MongoDB
4. Install it by opening the command line (in administrator mode), and typing the following: c:\data\mongodb\bin\mongod --install --logpath c:\data\db\log.txt 
5. Type this to get the service running: net start mongodb
6. In your .NET project, use NuGet to add a reference to the 10Gen Mongo driver and you're good to go! The driver is documented at http://www.mongodb.org/display...

Your database files will be stored in C:\data\db. (You can change this during install.. just type c:\data\mongodb\bin\mongod --help for more options)

To backup the database: c:\data\MongoDB\bin\mongodump

To restore a database c:\data\mongoDB\bin\mongorestore

There is also a great GUI for exploring a MongoDB database called "MongoVue" available at http://www.mongovue.com/

Other noSql DBs for .NET

1. RavenDB: Provides HTTP/JSON access. LINQ queries & sharding support.
2. Sones Graph DB: API: .NET, Protocol: .NET embedded, REST, WebServices, query method: graph query language, LINQ.
3. Starcounter: API: C# (.NET languages), schema: native language class model, query method: SQL, concurrency: fully ACID compliant, storage: in-memory with transactions secured on disk, reliability: full checkpoint recovery.
4. Sterling: is a lightweight object-oriented database for .NET with support for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. It features in-memory keys and indexes, triggers, and support for compressing and encrypting the underlying data.
5. Morantex: Stores .NET classes in a datapool. Build for speed. SQL Server integration. LINQ support.
6. FileDB: Mainly targeted to Silverlight/Windows Phone developers but its also great for any .NET application where a simple local database is required, extremely Lightweight - less than 50K, stores one table per file, including index, compiled versions for Windows Phone 7, Silverlight and .NET, fast, free to use in your applications.

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