Jun 12, 2009, 23:55 by janl
I liked the general approach of showing NoSQL databases as an alternative to relational databases (but then, I'm biased :) In addition, the respective intros were very helpful.
Alternative Databases
Scott MacVicar (Jun 12, 2009)
at Dutch PHP Conference 2009 (English - US)
Relational databases are considered the norm for most new projects but is it really suited to the task? The most common use for a database is to store data to disk in which an elaborate statement is used to retrieve. In most cases its difficult to correctly scale a RDBMS and you still need to have enough space to store an entire copy of the database.
Database systems such as CouchDB, MemcacheDB and Amazon's SimpleDB take a different approach that make it easier to do distribution and simpler to use.
This session will briefly cover why a relational database might be a bad choice for your project before exploring CouchDB, MemcacheDB and SimpleDB as possible solutions included will be some code samples and demos.
Quicklink: http://joind.in/594
Comments
Jun 13, 2009, 08:07 by Anonymous
Nice talk, but I allways have problems understanding Scott.
Jun 13, 2009, 08:09 by jach
Nice talk. Love the accent. Maybe a bit to quick and a bit more focus on the PHP angle on the matter.
Jun 13, 2009, 09:33 by joe
Good talk, nice primer into these alternative DBs. If slight overlap with CouchDB presentation was avoided, the other DBs could have been explained a bit more.
Jun 13, 2009, 19:45 by Anonymous
good talk, with a lot of information on the subject. Though, it was a bit rushed. I would have liked to see some use cases for and maybe comparison in performance to relational databases perhaps.
Jun 13, 2009, 19:49 by Anonymous
Good info, and timely. Speaker was great, worked well with the audience.
On the other hand, if you're just aware of the projects and what they are, you won't necessarily learn a whole more on top of that (handy though, if you don't know all of them or how they compare).
Nonetheless, definitely one of the better talks at DPC.
Jun 14, 2009, 10:03 by nebulous
Great speaker, content was good, if a bit broad and lacking in depth. Good last-minute coordination with @janl to avoid duplicate info.
Jun 14, 2009, 13:41 by drm
Seen some cool stuff, but it was a bit too theoretical imho. I missed some practical use cases when to use a classical RDBMS or an alternative.
Jun 14, 2009, 21:56 by rickmb
Good talk, very informative. Maybe a bit too much for a single talk (explaining non-relational databases, giving a complete overview of the current options plus usage examples, that's quite a lot to stuff in one session).
Jun 15, 2009, 08:21 by mihahribar
Great talk! Too much information to process all at once, so I'll have to go through the slides a couple more times :)
Jun 16, 2009, 17:27 by Anonymous
First 15 minutes bashing RDMS's , What's the use? If you can't write a proper join, you can't probably write a very good program. No comparisson in performances. Etc.etc. Poor.
Probably there is a use for non-relational databases, but the speaker didn't make that clear. In stead he made a strawman out of MySQl
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html
Currently not open for comment.
Jun 12, 2009, 21:02 by marce!
Quite a nice talk about the databases, although the end was a bit rushed. Didn't stress enough when relational databases are a better choice and when the alternatives are better. Relational databases are not all bad. It depends on the circumstances.
As a sidenote I would be interested to see if these alternatives would be good to use for ORM applications.