As a software developer, you have likely had to build solutions that required you to manage data of varying forms and sizes. Just as it is important to use the right tool for the job, it's equally important to use the right databases for different kinds of data. Well, this brings us down to the idea of polyglot persistence.
The term "polyglot persistence" describes the use of various data storage techniques within a single system to handle various data storage requirements. Each database has its idiosyncrasies and considering the number of databases out there, it may be hard to keep up. Complex applications combine different types of data. so picking the right database for the job may be more productive than trying to solve all the data storage needs of the system using a single database which could eventually lead to a non-performant solution. For example, relational databases are good for enforcing relationships that exist between data tables while graph databases may solve the problems of relationships in the case of big data whereas a NoSQL document database might be used to store unstructured data as the case may be. Hence, various database systems are used within a single application to handle a variety of issues.
Development teams often use a number of data sources to feed their application. Some of the common data storage options include
Relational Database:
Based on the relational data model, this database stores data in rows (tuples) and columns (attributes), which together make a table (relation). For storing, modifying, and preserving the data in a relational database, SQL is used. Some examples of Relational databases are MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, etc.
NoSQL Databases:
NoSQL also referred to as Not only SQL or Non-sql are non tabular databases that enables the storage and querying of data outside the traditional structures found in relational databases. We can further divide a NoSQL database into the following four types:
Key-value storage: It is the most basic form of database storage because it holds each item's value and key in one place.
Document oriented database: This particular database type is used to store data as JSON-like document. Using the same document-model format as in the application code facilitates data storage for developers.
Graph database: It is used to store huge amounts of information in a form resembling a graph. Social networking websites most frequently make use of the graph database.
Wide-column stores: It is comparable to how relational databases represent data. Instead of keeping the data in rows, it is grouped together in these huge columns.
Proper and accurate planning of the requirements of your system could eliminate a great percentage of potential issues and also play a great role in the implementation of polyglot persistence in your projects. Without prior experience building different data models, it can be challenging to efficiently utilize the appropriate data solutions. In my subsequent posts, we will be going through how to implement some of these data storage options.