An Empirical Study of NoSQL Databases for Big Data

Relational databases have dominated the database markets for decades because they perform extremely well for traditional applications like electronic commerce and inventory systems. However, the relational databases do not suit some of the contemporary applications such as big data and cloud computing well because of various reasons like their low scalability and unable to handle a high volume of data. NoSQL (not only SQL) databases are part of the solution for developing those newer applications. The approach they use is different from the one used by relational databases. This chapter discusses NoSQL databases by using an empirical instead of theoretical approach. Other than introducing the types and features of generic NoSQL databases, practical NoSQL database programming and usage are shown by using MongoDB, a NoSQL database. A summary of this research is given at the end of this chapter.