Eric Genesky 
Broad NoSQL Adoption in 2012?
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This article is part of the DZone NoSQL Resource Portal, which is brought to you in collaboration with Neo Technology and DataStax. Visit the NoSQL Resource Portal for additional tutorials, videos, opinions, and other resources on this topic.
The current state of SQL may cause some developers physical pain, especially when they see an industry-wide survey released by Couchbase yesterday that suggest a strong growth in NoSQL adoption in 2012. As a self-defined "Simple, Fast, Elastic NoSQL Database," Couchbase has recently rebranded their NoSQL Membase server from Membase to Couchbase. This merger of Membase, an open source DMS, and CouchOne suggests that Couchbase has a vested interest in the future NoSQL development. Therefore, it may behoove you to take these results with a grain of salt.
The survey was responded to by 1,300 individuals across a wide demographic. Although Couchbase could not provide the percentages represented in the survey response, the survey was targeted at advertising, banking, business services, education, gaming, government/military, insurance, media, non profit, retail and telecom. The survey indicates that 20% of respondants claim that the role of NoSQL will play a "Somewhat Important" or "Not Important" role in their organizations in 2012, while 25% claim that NoSQL will be "Critical to daily operations" in 2012.
Regarding the move away from relational to NoSQL database technology, 49% of respondents cited rigid schemas as the primary reason, followed by high latency/low performance and lack of scalability.
It will be interesting to see how the future of NoSQL plays out, as this survey is certainly not representative of all opinions. Alex Tatiyants recently published a somewhat sarcastic article titled "NoSQL No More: Let's double down with MoreSQL," that suggested a "new movement dedicated to bringing back the golden era of relational databases." This article inspired some discussion, with William Edwards suggesting that, according to a recently published white paper, "Tenzing - A SQL Implementation of the MapReduce Framework," Google has been doing some of their own "MoreSQL" work. Check out a more in-depth description of MoreSQL conversation here.
Marin Fowler has also chimed into the discussion; he recently published an illuminating infodeck titled "The future is:NoSQL Databases Polyglot Persistence." Hopefully these various developments in the great SQL / NoSQL debate will lead somewhere new and interesting. You can check out further NoSQL developments over in the NoSQL Zone.
The survey was responded to by 1,300 individuals across a wide demographic. Although Couchbase could not provide the percentages represented in the survey response, the survey was targeted at advertising, banking, business services, education, gaming, government/military, insurance, media, non profit, retail and telecom. The survey indicates that 20% of respondants claim that the role of NoSQL will play a "Somewhat Important" or "Not Important" role in their organizations in 2012, while 25% claim that NoSQL will be "Critical to daily operations" in 2012.
Regarding the move away from relational to NoSQL database technology, 49% of respondents cited rigid schemas as the primary reason, followed by high latency/low performance and lack of scalability.
It will be interesting to see how the future of NoSQL plays out, as this survey is certainly not representative of all opinions. Alex Tatiyants recently published a somewhat sarcastic article titled "NoSQL No More: Let's double down with MoreSQL," that suggested a "new movement dedicated to bringing back the golden era of relational databases." This article inspired some discussion, with William Edwards suggesting that, according to a recently published white paper, "Tenzing - A SQL Implementation of the MapReduce Framework," Google has been doing some of their own "MoreSQL" work. Check out a more in-depth description of MoreSQL conversation here.
Marin Fowler has also chimed into the discussion; he recently published an illuminating infodeck titled "The future is:
(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)
Neo Technology and DataStax are leading the charge for the NoSQL movement. You can learn more about the Neo4j Graph Database in the project discussion forums and try out the new Spring Data Neo4j, which enables POJO-based development. You can also see how Apache Cassandra, a ColumnFamily data store, is pushing the boundaries of persistence with cloud capabilities and deployments at SocialFlow and Netflix.
Comments
Jagadeesh Sangem replied on Fri, 2012/02/10 - 3:12am