NoSQL Database – the Right Tool for Many Jobs
NoSQL databases have exploded in use over the last decade. When they first joined the marketplace, developers were not sure how to use them. But with time, we’ve found many excellent use cases where NoSQL is transforming the way developers create applications and the ways users interact with these applications.
Let’s take a look at,
- The top use cases for NoSQL databases and,
- Why NoSQL databases are better than relational databases in these circumstances
Real-time Data Processing
Processing and acting on new data provides organizations operational efficiency and agility. NoSQL databases are excellent at handling real-time data processing, or nearly real-time processing.
Some NoSQL databases include stream processing, which allows developers to ingest and process data in real-time. BangDB is one of the leading NoSQL databases for stream processing to power predictive analytics and other real-time data activities.
Payment processing also requires real-time data processing. Take for example the massive payment application PayPal, which is regularly ingesting financial transactions and processing them in real-time. As more consumers go online for their purchasing needs, payment processing, and real-time transactions increase.
Mobile Applications
Mobile apps can have millions of users, all engaging with the content at the same time. Today’s apps power online activities like shopping, searching, or playing games. As mobile surpasses desktop website traffic, the sheer volumes of data that these applications must process per second is astounding.
That’s what makes them ideal for NoSQL databases. Many apps also scale quite quickly to meet the needs of rapidly expanding user bases. Some social media applications have tens of millions of users at a given time, which requires distributed databases with fault tolerance and the ability to handle surges in use.
NoSQL is also good for mobile applications because it allows for a more rapid development process compared to the process required when using relational databases.
Internet of Things (IoT)
New research indicates that there are currently more than 46 billion Internet of Things (IoT) applications and devices in use today. That’s a 200 percent increase over the number of IoT applications in 2016 and growth is not about to slow down. In fact, these applications are growing at astounding rates.
IoT applications process semi-structured data, which requires a NoSQL database. And these devices also process enormous amounts of data in a single day, requiring the speed and agility that NoSQL can provide.
NoSQL databases scale much more quickly and efficiently than relational databases since data can be distributed among servers instead of requiring that you scale your servers vertically.
Engaging Customer Experiences
User expectations continue to increase when it comes to application functionality. NoSQL databases can help power personalized experiences to further engage users. The power to create and manage a profile is another use case that is driving the move toward NoSQL over relational databases for outstanding customer experiences.
These custom experiences also require large amounts of data storage and processing, which makes a distributed database attractive. NoSQL helps make these engaging customer experiences affordable by allowing for commodity storage options.
Content Management
Content is king. Whether you’re managing an online marketplace or social media platform filled with multi-media experiences, generating and delivering content is an essential part of business today.
As the internet fills with online reviews, images, videos, and other types of user-generated content, companies need a practical way of processing and storing this information the moment that users interact with it.
The flexibility of NoSQL databases makes them ideal for content management scenarios. And because these databases can manage structured, semi-structured and unstructured data all in one place, organizations can aggregate that data from various applications to create one main data store for processing and understanding all data.
NoSQL as the Database of Choice for Developers
The technology and functionality of NoSQL databases continue to increase alongside the use cases for them. As data processing needs continue to increase, NoSQL databases become more attractive for organizations to manage expenses while getting the functionality they need to engage and interact with their customers effectively.
Slowly, NoSQL is beginning to surpass relational databases as the database of choice for powering applications.