Designing a Database: Pros & Cons - Essay Sample

Introduction

A proper design of a database is very crucial in making sure that there is consistent data, data redundancy elimination, adequate execution of queries and great performance of an application. It is very important to adequately design databases to make sure that there are easy access and retrieval of information for certain organization and specific reasons. There are several types of databases. The various types of databases have their pros and cons. However, some databases are considered efficient than others but in specific scenarios. This usually depends on the type, time and amount of data an individual or a group would wish to store or to retrieve. Other myriad factors are determined in designing certain databases. This paper is going to discuss the difference between NoSQL Databases and Relational Databases to a company that has ten thousand customers and more than one million employees and where the employees are required to update the information of their own.

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Relational Databases (SQL) were created ahead of NoSQL, while NoSQL databases were created in the 90s to solve the limitations of the SQL. Some of the spectra that the NoSQL address include the being non-relational, distributed, horizontally scalable data and open-source data. However, it is not right to say that NoSQL is better than SQL (Pore and Swalaya p 1747-1753). The two types of databases could be used to address different kinds of needs.

Some of the advantages of SQL is that it can use a single standardized language for varying RDBMS, further, it uses non-structural and advanced querying language, it sticks to its characteristics hence guaranteeing stability as well as security of data (Pore and Swalaya p 1747-1753). The last advantage of SQL is that it uses a single uniform language. The major disadvantage of SQL is that it is difficult to scale down as much as database size grows larger. It therefore, becomes a major problem. Also, another disadvantage is that sharding becomes a major problem (Pore and Swalaya p 1747-1753).

It should be understood that one of the major advantages of NoSQL is that it has got high support for unstructured text. Also, it has the ability to scale horizontally on various commodity hardware as well as less needs for ETL. The major advantage of SQL is its ability to handle change over a period of time. Lastly, SQL supports multiple data structures.

Now, the NoSQL databases can have several disadvantages with regards to a company that has many customers and employees as well as one that requires customers to update their data. NoSQL lacks reliability function which SQL has. This kind of database also lacks ACID: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability (Pore and Swalaya p 1747-1753). These are a set of functions that are responsible for guaranteeing the validity of transactions even when there are power outages or errors. Again, a company would risk using a NoSQL database since it is new and may have less functionality. Again, with big data, NoSQL can escalate the technical debt and put an organization at risk of data integrity and inadequate resilience.

Conclusion

In conclusion there is no universal choice for the type of database. It is because both SQL and NoSQL have their pros and cons that can be applied to different kinds of needs. Therefore, it is challenging to decide that SQL is better than NoSQL and vice versa. However, in my opinion, I would choose NoSQL.

Work Cited

Pore, Supriya S., and Swalaya B. Pawar. "Comparative Study of SQL & NoSQL Databases." Int. J. Adv. Res. Comput. Eng. Technol 4.5 (2015). Pg. 1747-1753