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Digg Says Yes To NoSQL Cassandra DB, Bye To MySQL

Posted by timothy on from the can-you-trust-a-db-by-that-name? dept.

donadony writes "After twitter, now it's Digg who's decided to replace MySQL and most of their infrastructure components and move away from LAMP to another architecture called NoSQL that is based in Cassandra, an open source project that develops a highly scalable second-generation distributed database. Cassandra was open sourced by Facebook in 2008 and is licensed under the Apache License. The reason for this move, as explained by Digg, is the increasing difficulty of building a high-performance, write-intensive application on a data set that is growing quickly, with no end in sight. This growth has forced them into horizontal and vertical partitioning strategies that have eliminated most of the value of a relational database, while still incurring all the overhead."

9 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Facebook, Twitter and now Digg by clarkkent09 · · Score: 5, Funny

    In other news, Cassandra developers are celebrating the fact that their database is now used to store the largest amount of worthless information in history.

    --
    Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  2. New acronym in order? by mgkimsal2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the Digg blog - http://about.digg.com/node/564

    "And if that doesn't sound like a big enough challenge, we're replacing most of our infrastructure components and moving away from LAMP."

    Cassandra Linux Apache PHP?

    --
    creation science book
  3. Re:Which DB is better? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Informative

    Postgres, for people who care about their data.

  4. Re:Reddit by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was not aware metallurgy was popular amongst the youth.

  5. Allergic reaction to MySQL by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These slides present a balanced and comprehensive overview of the current state of free databases. Whether you're in the NoSQL camp or not, they're worth reading.

    That said, here's my take:

    It's currently fashionable to replace MySQL with some "NoSQL" database or other. This trend is driven by two factors:

    • MySQL's community is fragmenting into several forks as Oracle purchases the rights, which created the impression that MySQL's development is entering a riskier, unstable period.
    • "NoSQL" is the technology buzzword du jour in the Bay Area. It's difficult to overstate the impact of social forces on technology choice: most technology selections are governed more by what our friends say than by an impartial and disinterested weighing of merits.

    I haven't seen any consideration from potential "NoSQL" adopters of the benefits of using a good relational database like PostgreSQL. There's a world of difference between it and MySQL, and condemning all relational database systems because of bad experiences with MySQL is like condemning all sandwiches because McDonalds once made you sick. In giving up RDBMSes entirely, these developers lose quite a bit of safety, flexibility, an convenience. It's a huge over-reaction.

    This field should not be about following trends, though unfortunately, that's how most people choose which technologies to use: it should be about choosing the best tool for the job. And I believe that in the vast majority of cases, the advantages conferred by a relational system --- enforced integrity, interoperability based on SQL, query flexibility, storage flexibility --- make an RDBMs the best choice for almost any job. If you need sloppier semantics for some cases (for example, "eventual consistency"), you can layer that on top of a robust RDBMs.

    1. Re:Allergic reaction to MySQL by jrumney · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I haven't seen any consideration from potential "NoSQL" adopters of the benefits of using a good relational database like PostgreSQL.

      The adopters of NoSQL deal with huge volumes of worthless information. They don't care about transactional integrity as much as they care about performance, which is why they chose MySQL over a good relational database in the first place.

  6. Re:Which DB is better? by RelliK · · Score: 5, Informative

    Go with PostgreSQL. Reliable, standards-compliant, fast.

    --
    ___
    If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
  7. "NoSQL"? by Stan+Vassilev · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Am I the only one who frowns at this moniker?

    First, it creates a false premise where people need to pick "SQL" versus "no SQL", while many real-world systems intelligently combine relational and non-relational data storage for their needs. There is no conflict.

    Second, there's nothing wrong with SQL as a language in particular, and in fact many of the "noSQL" engines are starting to support and extending basic SQL queries, instead of reinventing their own query language for the same purpose.

    I suppose "lessRDBMSabuse" was less catchy...

  8. Re:The Monty crowd will blame this on Oracle by PietjeJantje · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You have to understand the slashdot memes. These are constructed around the state of technology over a decade ago. So, PHP is always bad, Javascript and Ajax are always bad, and when someone mentions MySQL, the karma whores come out to bash it and mention PostgreSQL. They don't need an argument, the authors and upvoters are operating in old-man auto-bot mode. Like I said, it typically involves notions which were fixed years ago if they did exist to begin with. These are elitist-wannabees, using simple rules of engagement, to show you how smart they are. Similar to grammar nazi. It is actually a quite lower-class thing to do. As Hannibal Lecter would say, you have to wonder if they still hear the lambs screaming.