As data continues to impact every facet of every business more and more Global 2000 companies are choosing NoSQL databases to power their Digital Economy applications.
DBTA recently held a webinar with David Segleau, director of technical product marketing at Couchbase, who discussed which applications can/should be candidates for NoSQL, how to get started building a JSON document data model, how to migrate a table-based data model to JSON documents, and how to optimize a design to enable fast query performance.
The world is changing rapidly and customers now expect exceptional digital experiences that are personalized, feature-rich, quick, and can be accessed anywhere at any time, Segleau explained.
Businesses need the agility to adapt to changes in demand, responsive and context-aware customer experiences, multi-channel and multi-device engagement, and the ability to support a large and growing number of users to succeed in this world.
The reasons to migrate from an RDBMS to NoSQL include the ability to evolve and adapt by changing apps instead of the database and optimize low latency ops with higher throughput. In addition, it is multiplatform, scalable, and typically comes at a lower price tag, he noted.
The Couchbase Data Platform can help enterprises migrate smoothly, according to Segleau. The platform offers flexible JSON documents, a SQL query engine for JSON, a service-centric clustered data system, offline mobile data integration, has built-in intelligence, provides full-text search, and operational analytics.
To get started, users have to identify the right application, then begin a data modeling process. Couchbase then determines data access.
Segleau offered some pointers for training users in this transition:
- Don’t just assume you can switch to any NoSQL platform without some training
- N1QL (declarative query language that extends SQL for JSON ) does help reduce the learning curve significantly
- N1QL’s similarities to SQL make it easier to transition, but still requires some practice
- For .NET development shops, look at Linq2Couchbase to make it even easier
- The performance profile is different, and the penalties can appear in different places
- Developers who know the pitfalls in advance can save a lot of refactoring headaches later
- The operations department needs training, too
An archived on-demand replay of this webinar is available here.