

Relational database pioneer weighs in on NoSQL - ryandvm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/13/michael_stonebraker_interview/print.html

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wccrawford
"The NoSQL guys are people who know nothing about databases and their first
reaction is to lash out, so I'm not surprised, [by the reaction]," he said.

I guess he's not above a little mudslinging.

This article wasn't about NoSQL at all. It was about his new competitor to the
existing databases, SQL and NoSQL alike.

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ergo98
He knows how to get press, and playing up that confrontation yields links and
references. Just as many NoSQL pieces start off with some often ridiculous
attacks on YeSQL.

I'm still trying to understand how SciDB differs from VoltDB. We're currently
evaluating VoltDB for some analysis processes.

~~~
jhugg
VoltDB is focused on mutating an in-memory dataset at ultra-high speed with
full transactions and ACID.

SciDB is focused on analyzing petabytes of scientific data in array form,
where people care about things like data provenance and accumulated error
bounds.

Almost polar opposites in use, but similar in philosophy. Both believe
specialized systems are the way to handle specialized workloads.

~~~
ergo98
Very interesting, thank you. This is the most concise description of this
product that I have yet seen.

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ubercore
I'm not too deep in the NoSQL world, but isn't this article conflating
MapReduce with NoSQL? NoSQL is a broad AJAX-y term, but generally I thought it
was referring to schema-less/document databases, not MapReduce. You don't have
to use MapReduce (necessarily) to query a NoSQL datastore, and you could use
MapReduce on a relational database, right?

~~~
adamtj
I would agree that MapReduce and NoSQL are different things, but so are NoSQL
and AJAX.

I've always thought of NoSQL as a class of durable, distributed lookup tables,
and the style of programming which uses such tools as a primary data store.
It's basically bdb scaled up with nice libraries built on top. Document
databases seem to me to be api sugar.

~~~
ubercore
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that NoSQL and AJAX had any relation. I was just
using it as an example of an overly broad term that came to mean more than it
possibly should have (ie, any advanced Javascript was/is called AJAX, whether
it uses XHR and xml or not).

This article seems to take NoSQL down that path, by putting MapReduce under
its umbrella.

~~~
adamtj
I see, and I agree, both terms are overly broad.

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scotth
This article is very poorly written. It's as if no one double checked it. I've
come across three mistakes and I'm not even finished yet.

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drv
Agreed; in particular, the quotes read like poorly-transcribed scribbles that
don't even form sentences.

~~~
pbh
I for one am relieved that SciDB will be supporting bulk load rather than the
"single road insert" that we have been saddled with all this time in other
relational database products.

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some1else
Duplicate entry: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1685902>

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mcantor
I don't understand the appeal of these articles. There was another one a while
ago that had a quote like, "I asked someone with 10 years of PHP experience
what they thought of the Rails project they had been working on for the last
few months, and they said that it was completely worthless!" Why would someone
who has worked deeply with a _diametrically oppositional_ technology be
qualified to talk about NoSQL?

~~~
adamtj
They aren't diametrically opposed. They are different aspects of the same
thing.

At the end of the day, it's all just tables. NoSQL gives you one table and all
sorts of scalability and robustness and tools for working with that table.
RDBMSs give you many tables, and all sorts of robustness and scalability and
tools for working with those many tables, and for putting them together in
interesting ways to get answers to your questions.

NoSQL allows for much greater scalability for your one table because it
doesn't have to assume you are doing anything too complicated with it.
Usually, you just want a few records at a time. That can be made fast, even if
there are billions or trillions of other records, and they do make it fast.

RDBMSs trade that sort of scalability for the ability to easily ask very very
complicated questions and get answers reasonably quickly.

And here's this guy in the article talking about RDBMSs with column oriented
tables instead of row oriented tables. And then he bashed MapReduce, which is
about transforming data, and has nothing to do with tables or storing and
retrieving data. So NoSQL and RDBMSs are not diametrically opposed. Talking
about them is like comparing apples and oranges, which are both fruit, but not
equivalent. Throwing MapReduce in there is like comparing apples and oranges
and blenders.

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jbellis
<http://twitter.com/moonpolysoft/status/24405372639>

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T_S_
Wow. That could use some editing.

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some1else
Seriously! I could adjust for some spelling errors, but sometimes the entire
sentence lost it's meaning.

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bborud
Thorvalds v. Tanenbaum redux.

