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New PostgreSQL Guns For NoSQL Market

Posted by samzenpus on from the coming-for-you dept.

angry tapir (1463043) writes "Embracing the widely used JSON data-exchange format, the new version of the PostgreSQL open-source database takes aim at the growing NoSQL market of nonrelational data stores, notably the popular MongoDB. The first beta version of PostgreSQL 9.4, released Thursday, includes a number of new features that address the rapidly growing market for Web applications, many of which require fast storage and retrieval of large amounts of user data."

3 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. How about Parallel Query Execution? by wispoftow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    NB: I love PostgreSQL with all my heart. I always upgrade to the most recent version, because they implement features that I really need. Added to the existing features of Postgres, it's totally awesome.

    But as I have moved toward "Big Data" and the market segment that these new-fangled (non-relational) databases target, I find myself wishing that Postgres would be able to run my vanilla query (*singular*) using all processors. As it is now, I have to either write some awful functions that query manually-partitioned subtables, or simply wait while it plods through all billion or so rows.

    1. Re:How about Parallel Query Execution? by mlyle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Look at Postgres-XL that we just released. It's a clustered database and can do MPP execution of your queries and has good write-scalability too. (To use all the processors in each machine, you'll want to have a few data nodes per machine.) It's pretty clever about planning a lot of things.

  2. Re:next for NoSQL by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All "NoSQL" means is that the database doesn't use SQL as its interface, nor the massive infrastructure needed to implement the SQL standard. This lets you build some things that lighter than SQL-based things, like schemaless data stores. There several consistency models that let you have a fair comparison. It's not the case that NoSQL must trade consistency for availability in a way that makes it impossible to move toward SQL spec behavior.

    Differences include:

    • Less durability for writes. Originally PostgreSQL only had high durability, NoSQL low. Now both have many options going from commit to memory being good enough to move on, up to requiring multiple nodes get the data first.
    • No heavy b-tree indexes on the data.
      Key-value indexes are small and efficient to navigate,
    • No complicated MVCC model for complicated read/write mixes.

      Today NoSQL solutions like MongoDB still have a better story for sharding data across multiple servers. NoSQL also give you Flexible schemaless design, scaling by adding nodes, and simpler/lighter query and indexes.

      PostgreSQL is still working on a built-in answer for multi-node sharding. A lot of the small NoSQL features have been incorporated, with JSON and the hstore key-value index being how Postgres does that part. Both system have converged so much, either one is good enough for many different types of applications.