5 Alternatives to the Traditional Relational Database
The ongoing popularity of the Hadoop approach to data management should not blind us to the opportunities offered by other database technologies – technologies that, when used in the proper mix, can deliver adequate scaling to meet the demands of the endless 50 percent-plus yearly growth in data to be analyzed, along with higher data quality for better business decisions. The new(er) technologies basically can be categorized as follows:
- In-memory databases
- Hadoop/NoSQL
- Virtualized or “federated” databases
- Columnar databases
- Streaming databases
Let’s consider briefly the pros and cons of each, and where each might fit in an optimized information infrastructure.
Wayne Kernochan has been an IT industry analyst and auther for over 15 years. He has been focusing on the most important information-related technologies as well as ways to measure their effectiveness over that period. He also has extensive research on the SMB, Big Data, BI, databases, development tools and data virtualization solutions. Wayne is a regular speaker at webinars and is a writer for many publications.
