Book Image

Seven NoSQL Databases in a Week

By : Sudarshan Kadambi, Xun (Brian) Wu
Book Image

Seven NoSQL Databases in a Week

By: Sudarshan Kadambi, Xun (Brian) Wu

Overview of this book

This is the golden age of open source NoSQL databases. With enterprises having to work with large amounts of unstructured data and moving away from expensive monolithic architecture, the adoption of NoSQL databases is rapidly increasing. Being familiar with the popular NoSQL databases and knowing how to use them is a must for budding DBAs and developers. This book introduces you to the different types of NoSQL databases and gets you started with seven of the most popular NoSQL databases used by enterprises today. We start off with a brief overview of what NoSQL databases are, followed by an explanation of why and when to use them. The book then covers the seven most popular databases in each of these categories: MongoDB, Amazon DynamoDB, Redis, HBase, Cassandra, In?uxDB, and Neo4j. The book doesn't go into too much detail about each database but teaches you enough to get started with them. By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of the different NoSQL databases and their functionalities, empowering you to select and use the right database according to your needs.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

The difference between SQL and DynamoDB


DynamoDB uses the NoSQL model, which means that it is a non-relational database system. The difference between a relational database and DynamoDB is outlined in the following table:

SQL

DynamoDB

The SQL database system uses the persistent connection and SQL commands.

DynamoDB uses HTTP/HTTPS requests and API operations.

RDBMS's fundamental structure is a table, and its schema must be defined in advance before any operation happens on a table.

DynamoDB uses the primary key, and a schema is not required to be defined in advance. It also uses various data sources.

All table information is accessible and we can query almost all data. SQL is rich in query processing.

Only the primary key is available for querying. To get more flexibility in querying data, one must use secondary indexes.

In RDBMS, information is stored in rows of tables.

In DynamoDB, information is stored as items in a table and the item structure can vary as it is schemaless.

SQL databases use a select...