Unlock the Power of NoSQL Databases: A Deep Dive into Wide-Column Stores
In the world of databases, NoSQL is often misunderstood as an ancient technology. However, its popularity and usefulness have grown exponentially since the late 2000s, making it an essential tool for almost every big website and company. One of the less complex NoSQL database management systems is the wide-column store, which stores data in columns rather than rows, making it perfect for queries and less than optimal for large sets of data.
The Four Main NoSQL Database Management Systems
To understand why column families are so popular, let’s take a look at the four main NoSQL database management systems:
- Key-value stores, such as Redis, where every item is given an attribute name/key and value
- Document databases, such as MongoDB, which associate keys with a complex data schema known as a document
- Graph databases, like Neo4j, which sort network information such as social connections
- Wide-column stores, such as HBase, Google BigTable, Cassandra, MariaDB, and HyperTable, which store data in columns rather than rows
Column-Oriented Databases Explained
Column-oriented databases use the typical tables, columns, and rows, but unlike relational databases, columnar formatting and names can vary from row to row inside the same table. Each column of a column-oriented database is stored separately on-disk, allowing for improved compression of attributes when stored in an attribute-wise manner.
What are Column Families?
To better understand wide-column stores, let’s explore the concept of a “column family.” Column families aren’t the same as wide-column stores; instead, wide-column stores consist of column families. A family, or database object, contains columns of related information. The object is a tuple of a key-value pair where the key is linked to a value, and the value is a set of columns.
What are Wide-Column Stores?
Wide-column stores are column-oriented databases that use column families and are one of the types of NoSQL databases. This sort of database is built to store large amounts of data and is highly scalable. Wide-column stores support a column family stored together on-disk, while columnar stores each column separately.
Columnar Relational Models: Advantages and Disadvantages
Columnar relational models allow for improved compression of attributes when stored in an attribute-wise manner. However, updates can be inefficient, and it’s slower when deleting rows from columnar systems.
Queries in OLTP and OLAP Applications
Columnar families work well for OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) but not well for OLTP (Online Transactional Processing). In OLTP applications, single updates are being done on a very small part of the database, whereas in OLAP applications, queries look for metadata insights, such as averages of all account values (sum) across the table.
Use Cases for NoSQL Database Management Systems
NoSQL DBMSs are excellent options for various use cases, including:
- Personalization and customer experience
- Content management systems
- Real-time analytics
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Time series data such as temperature monitoring or financial trading data
Key Takeaways and How to Adapt Your Approach
Wide-column store databases provide improved automation with regard to vertical partitioning, horizontal partitioning, better compression, and auto-indexing of columns. Column-oriented systems allow the use of standard MySQL syntax for most commands. By integrating your knowledge of standard SQL/MySQL with frontend, you can unlock the power of NoSQL databases and take your application to the next level.