Click here to monitor SSC
SQLServerCentral is supported by Red Gate Software Ltd.
 
Log in  ::  Register  ::  Not logged in
 
 


 
     
Recent Posts
   
Popular Topics
Home   
Search
    Members    Calendar    Who's On

Home » Article Discussions » Article Discussions by Author » Discuss content posted by Phil Factor » The Longevity of the Relational Database
Add to briefcase
14 posts, Page 1 of 2
12»»

The Longevity of the Relational Database Expand / Collapse
Rate Topic
Display Mode
Topic Options
Author
Message
Phil Factor
Posted Saturday, September 15, 2012 4:26 AM


Mr or Mrs. 500

Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:10 AM
Points: 535, Visits: 2,295
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Longevity of the Relational Database

Best wishes,

Phil Factor
Simple Talk
Post #1359794
GPO
Posted Sunday, September 16, 2012 1:49 AM


Say Hey Kid

Say Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey Kid

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 11:45 PM
Points: 664, Visits: 1,328
Just because the relational model has a very good track record, doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful what we take for granted. For example, if someone had told me even five years ago, that today I would be running more Linux machines in my home than Windows machines, I would have thought they were stark raving bonkers. Back then I had Linux (fedora) as a bit of a curiosity, dual booting on one machine along side XP. I had two other machines; a Vista and another XP. Windows outnumbered Linux 3:1, and my Linux install served no real purpose except mild amusement.

Today my family has between us:
:: 4 phones, all running Linux
:: A Galaxy tab, running Linux
:: A NAS, running Linux out of the box
:: A Vista machine
:: An XP machine (dual booting Ubuntu)
:: A Tivo running Linux (I'm pretty sure it's Linux)
:: An old box given a new lease of life running Ubuntu (still just a plaything).

Linux outnumbers Windows 9:2 and it just... happened. There was no conscious decision for much of this. I learned the other day than a large employer near here (13,000 EFT) is dropping MS Office for Google docs. Management's attitude is "the staff will just have to adapt". I wish them luck, sounds like my idea of hell.

The point is that these changes can sneak up on us, and presumably data management is not immune. The biggest user of organised data in the world would have to be Google. Is all/any of their data organised in the conventional relational way? Just as Windows missed (perhaps intentionally) the evolution of the OS into almost a disposable consumer item, RDBMSs could go the same way. We may not notice it at first because the RDBMSs reach may be still expanding, but if they fail to expand as rapidly as the "next big thing" they may eventually fade into the niche world.



One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell
Post #1359867
Michael Meierruth
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 4:02 AM
SSC-Addicted

SSC-AddictedSSC-AddictedSSC-AddictedSSC-AddictedSSC-AddictedSSC-AddictedSSC-AddictedSSC-Addicted

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 12:38 AM
Points: 483, Visits: 1,625
Phil,
Can you name some of these 'new generation of databases'/'NoSQL' products/attempts/failures.
Thanks.
Post #1360067
hakim.ali
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 7:14 AM


Old Hand

Old HandOld HandOld HandOld HandOld HandOld HandOld HandOld Hand

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Monday, June 10, 2013 12:00 PM
Points: 385, Visits: 549
Good reading, thanks. The NoSQL movement is more than 20 years old? Didn't know that...

Hakim Ali
www.sqlzen.com
Post #1360179
Steve Jones - SSC Editor
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 7:42 AM


SSC-Dedicated

SSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-Dedicated

Group: Administrators
Last Login: Yesterday @ 5:37 PM
Points: 31,521, Visits: 13,855
Michael Meierruth (9/17/2012)
Phil,
Can you name some of these 'new generation of databases'/'NoSQL' products/attempts/failures.
Thanks.


Google's BigTable
Facebook's Cassandra
MongoDB
JSON is seen as a bit of a data store, I guess XML as well


Neo4J and other graph databases.

There's also Streambase and streaming technologies that displace RDBMSes in some ways.






Follow me on Twitter: @way0utwest

Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
Post #1360204
Steve Jones - SSC Editor
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 7:45 AM


SSC-Dedicated

SSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-DedicatedSSC-Dedicated

Group: Administrators
Last Login: Yesterday @ 5:37 PM
Points: 31,521, Visits: 13,855
GPO (9/16/2012)
Just because the relational model has a very good track record, doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful what we take for granted.

...


Good points, though I'm not sure the OS analogy is a great one. Many of what you mention are new types of devices that consume other services. The RDBMS still exists, though the big 3 (Oracle/DB2/SQL Server) are losing some of their dominance. The SQLLite, MySQL, etc. products have grown, but these are still RDBMS products.

There is likely to be change over time that grows other types of databases, and that makes sense. Some domains of problems need different solutions. The RDBMS works, but it's being shoehorned in places where something else does better. I think that we will always have RDBMS, and after file stores, these will have lots of data, but we'll see other types of stores (document, streaming, graph, maybe more) over time.






Follow me on Twitter: @way0utwest

Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
Post #1360207
Phil Factor
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 8:14 AM


Mr or Mrs. 500

Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500Mr or Mrs. 500

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:10 AM
Points: 535, Visits: 2,295
Phil,
Can you name some of these 'new generation of databases'/'NoSQL' products/attempts/failures.
Thanks.


I've just had a rummage around, but I haven't yet found my notes from the early nineties so I can't give you a full list. (I had to give up after sneezing at the dust!) However, the page Object Database should be a good starting point. I was going to give you a couple of examples that I could remember, but it seemed unfair to single them out since the people who worked so hard on them are still in the industry, probably, and my points were general, rather than aimed at the two whose names I can remember! (Also, one of them has actually limped on to the present day, evidently after being bought a few times) Nobody had invented the 'NoSQL' umbrella term then.

Best wishes,

Phil Factor
Simple Talk
Post #1360232
jay-h
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 8:56 AM
Say Hey Kid

Say Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey Kid

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Friday, June 14, 2013 10:50 AM
Points: 691, Visits: 1,724
There are plenty of places where absolute consistency is less important than size and speed. Many times I think a relational system is overkill for those applications.

But to expect that the relational model (or some very close variant) will no longer be required is like saying that arithmetic is obsolete.

...

-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
Post #1360260
Nadrek
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 9:24 AM
Say Hey Kid

Say Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey KidSay Hey Kid

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Monday, June 10, 2013 1:08 PM
Points: 679, Visits: 2,038
I actually have to keep asking developers "Why do you want to put that in SQL Server? What value does SQL Server and a relational model add to that data? What are you going to join it to? What does it relate to? Did you consider the licensing costs?"

SQL, as a mostly-relational database, is good for some things. It is, however, a huge amount of overhead for other things (write only logs that don't relate to anything, for instance). It's even very bad at some things (properly constrained temporal databases), though sometimes there isn't a better alternative available. Sometimes there is.
Post #1360279
GSquared
Posted Monday, September 17, 2012 9:48 AM


SSCoach

SSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoachSSCoach

Group: General Forum Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 1:45 PM
Points: 15,442, Visits: 9,572
GPO (9/16/2012)
Just because the relational model has a very good track record, doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful what we take for granted. For example, if someone had told me even five years ago, that today I would be running more Linux machines in my home than Windows machines, I would have thought they were stark raving bonkers. Back then I had Linux (fedora) as a bit of a curiosity, dual booting on one machine along side XP. I had two other machines; a Vista and another XP. Windows outnumbered Linux 3:1, and my Linux install served no real purpose except mild amusement.

Today my family has between us:
:: 4 phones, all running Linux
:: A Galaxy tab, running Linux
:: A NAS, running Linux out of the box
:: A Vista machine
:: An XP machine (dual booting Ubuntu)
:: A Tivo running Linux (I'm pretty sure it's Linux)
:: An old box given a new lease of life running Ubuntu (still just a plaything).

Linux outnumbers Windows 9:2 and it just... happened. There was no conscious decision for much of this. I learned the other day than a large employer near here (13,000 EFT) is dropping MS Office for Google docs. Management's attitude is "the staff will just have to adapt". I wish them luck, sounds like my idea of hell.

The point is that these changes can sneak up on us, and presumably data management is not immune. The biggest user of organised data in the world would have to be Google. Is all/any of their data organised in the conventional relational way? Just as Windows missed (perhaps intentionally) the evolution of the OS into almost a disposable consumer item, RDBMSs could go the same way. We may not notice it at first because the RDBMSs reach may be still expanding, but if they fail to expand as rapidly as the "next big thing" they may eventually fade into the niche world.


And even the Win XP/Vista/7 machines have bits of BSD Unix in the kernel and its periphery. Not Linux, but *nix nonetheless.

- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread

"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
Post #1360295
« Prev Topic | Next Topic »

Add to briefcase
14 posts, Page 1 of 2
12»»

Permissions Expand / Collapse

 
 
Copyright © 2002-2013 Simple Talk Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy. Terms of Use. Report Abuse.