Is the Relational Database Doomed?

DB Guy writes "There's an article over on Read Write Web about what the future of relational databases looks like when faced with new challenges to its dominance from key/value stores, such as SimpleDB, CouchDB, Project Voldemort and BigTable. The conclusion suggests that relational databases and key value stores aren't really mutually exclusive and instead are different tools for different requirements."

Uh-oh

[benjymouse]

Someone forgot to put a where clause on that delete.

Top 25 Reasons the Relational Database is Doomed

[MillionthMonkey]

Someone type this up and submit it to Digg.

Re:new record

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yeaah. Only if you did not know the meaning of the '?' symbol.

Voldemort!

[GreatRedShark]

There's a db called Project Voldemort? That's awesome! I'm switching to that just for the name! I think my manager is a Harry Potter fan so getting approval shouldn't be too hard.

Re:Voldemort!

[youthoftoday]

A Harry Potter fan? Voldemort? Surely the name is the one thing that'll *prevent* approval?

Re:Voldemort!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The name might be cool; but the length of some of the commands will really get to you. How many times do you want to type AVADA_KEDAVRA TABLE?

A great open source implementation

[thammoud]

Map db = new HashMap();

beginTransaction(); // Synchronize on the map
db.add("key", "value");
commitTransaction(); // Just serialize the fucker to a file. The idiots using this won't know the difference.

Re:Voldemort!

[the_B0fh]

**SPOILER ALERT**

In book 8, it turns out that good ol' Voldy is actually Harry's older brother. They had a tearful reunion, and Voldy now works for Harry.

In relation to what?

[Penguinshit]

I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it.

Re:Yeah

[idontgno]

Is white the new black?

No, it isn't, black is the new black, and whiten and black are not really mutually exclusive. And.... I made you look. Thanks for the pageviews, suckers!

Re:Enough with the death of the relational DB

[Penguinshit]

Don't online dating sites use relational databases?

Re:Voldemort!

[jollyreaper]

The name might be cool; but the length of some of the commands will really get to you. How many times do you want to type AVADA_KEDAVRA TABLE?

Better than PokemonDB. Then you have to jump on top of your desk and shout "Customer Table, I select you!" every time you run a damn query.

Re:Yes, but not soon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sleepycat made a good key/value pair database but that isn't what we're talking about.

Re:Voldemort!

[GreatRedShark]

You're right, that is a bit cumbersome. Hopefully, they'll release a friendly GUI wizard to make working with it more efficient.

Is the flat file doomed?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have seen how quickly flat file usage flatlined when relational databases came out. I mean *nobody* uses plain text files anymore. Can you imagine not having your crontabs in a SQL DB?

Re:?'s meaning - literal and implied

[117]

President Obama smokes crack?!!?!??!!?!

Re:new record

[julesh]

that's efficient -a summary that refutes the inflammatory headline

I'm just sayin'

Nah. Efficient would be if the summary were "No."

Re:new record

[eln]

Next Slashdot article: Is Jah-Wren Ryel a child molester?

There's no evidence Jah-Wren Ryel has ever molested children, and no reason to suspect he would ever do so. Bandying about accusations like that would likely ruin his life forever.

However, since child molestation is such a big political issue these days, as a responsible news site I believe we need to have equal representation from both sides of the argument and let our viewers decide.

Re:Some credibility...

[jernejk]

no, really.. this is utter crap: so called benefit: "The first benefit is that they are simple and thus scale much better than today's relational databases. If you are putting together a system in-house and intend to throw dozens or hundreds of servers behind your data store to cope with what you expect will be a massive demand in scale, then consider a key/value store." but then:"Bugs in a properly designed relational database usually don't lead to data integrity issues; bugs in a key/value database, however, quite easily lead to data integrity issues." and then it just goes on on how RDBMSs are really cool... oh, I got it, it was really written by Oracle reverse marketing department!

Re:Uh-oh

[MarkRose]

That's okay! I'll just rollback the transaction.... oh shit, that was a MyISAM table...

RDBMS don't scale!

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick someone tell CCP!

Yep, this will happen

[ghjm]

I can see the meeting now.

Developer: "Hey boss, I found a better product for the transaction processing data! It might save us a bunch of money on Oracle licenses!"
Boss: "Great, what is it?"
Developer: "Project Voldemort!"
Boss: "..."
Developer: "No really, let me explain..."
Boss: "I have a meeting to get to, but hey, let me know if you have any other great ideas."

Re:?'s meaning - literal and implied

[value_added]

President Obama smokes crack?!!?!??!!?!

Dunno. Has he stopped beating his wife?

A SQL query walks into a bar...

[SystematicPsycho]

A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and says 'Can I join you?'

From Tom Kyte's blog sql joke [blogspot.com]

Re:Voldemort!

[WuphonsReach]

Better than PokemonDB. Then you have to jump on top of your desk and shout "Customer Table, I select you!" every time you run a damn query.

*polite golf clap*

Re:?'s meaning - literal and implied

[sharkey]

OK, but, what about the fisting? [youtube.com]

Re:Voldemort!

[daveime]

It's already been done ...

HAI
CAN HAS DBASE?
I HAZ A VARIABLE1 IS NOTHING
IM IN YR DATA ;) "test.mdb"
        CAN I PLZ GET column1 column2 column3
        ALL UP IN table1
        OMG column1 IZ BIGGER THAN 5
        ALL UR BASE R BELONG 2 VARIABLE1
IM OUTTA YR DATA
VISIBLE VARIABLE1
KTHXBYE

Re:Enough with the death of the relational DB

[Yetihehe]

They do. Object databases are only for insensitive clods.