ORACLENERD: Is the Relational Database Doomed?

Is the Relational Database Doomed?

Friday, February 13, 2009

Straight from ReadWriteWeb, Is the Relational Database Doomed? Found via Mr. Eddie Awad.

Mr. M I'm sure would say that it is. Find our conversations here and here.

I don't know what the future may be. I do know that there are many people who don't understand, truly understand, how to use a database. My experience so far has been that those who don't understand far outnumber those who do.

Mr. M didn't care, didn't want to know what the underlying technology was. He just wanted a set() and get() method. I can't blame him really either. I wish I had been able to work with him more closely on an application to prove to him what it could do, but alas it was never to be.

I can also argue until I'm blue in the face (and I do) that it could be done far easier and more efficient in Oracle 99% of the time.

In the article above I did laugh a little bit at the Key/Value concept, reminds me of some articles I've read on AskTom and most recently his post here on the 4 table design.

Anyway, it's an interest read. I wonder if it will ever come true?

Labels: database, design, oracle, rant

¶ 2/13/2009 10:04:00 PM

Comments:

RWW is like the National Enquirer of tech websites. Their ignorant hyperboles aren't worth consideration, ever.

# posted by

Crisatunity : February 14, 2009 at 12:32 AM

I'm vaguely familiar with them and admittedly don't read them very often.

I'll definitely keep that in mind next time I run across one of their articles.

# posted by

oraclenerd : February 14, 2009 at 12:41 AM

There was some balance
"So, you will need to really trust your [cloud-oriented database] vendor, because you won't simply be able to switch down the line if you're not happy with the service"
All your data belong to us...

This stuff is fine for low value ephemeral data. Wouldn't use it for anything important though.

# posted by

Gary Myers : February 14, 2009 at 4:57 AM

Interesting points in the article. I don't see the RDBMS going away any time soon.

But with the current trends, I do see applications moving away from the traditional vision of using just 1 big monolithic database. The traditional database concept may fade away, into data stores. Where the application is accessing and assembling information from multiple data stores.

# posted by

John T : February 14, 2009 at 8:59 AM

Gary,

I'm with you on the last point and I believe many others are as well. However, I have read that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is SAS 70 compliant and possibly SOX compliant. That's a big step.

It would be hard to argue building out a data center that would meet all of your requirements (HA, scalability, security, etc) if they do so, in my opinion anyway.

There's still a ways to go though...

# posted by

oraclenerd : February 14, 2009 at 9:28 PM

John T,

We are fortunate enough to have these discussions each and every day.

My points has always been about the data. Applications and architectures come and go, data doesn't change.

(Our case is different, sort of...)

I'm always of the mind that if you do pay the money for an Oracle license you should leverage the shit out of it. VPD anyone? How easy is that? Great security tool.

ApEx? Sweet.

AQ? Pretty nice.

UTL_MAIL? nice.

Flashback? Sweet.

RMAN? Sweet.

Analytics? Sweet.

Streams? Nice.

CDC? Nice.

XMLDB? Nice.

Java? Sweet.

Point is, it is it's own platform. Pay a lot of money for it, use it!

# posted by

oraclenerd : February 14, 2009 at 9:36 PM