NoSQL: Awesome tech with a stupid name
Recently I’ve been looking into new ways to deal with extremely large datasets. With Twitter and Digg making announcements recently that they’re migrating, or have migrated their operations to Cassandra, I’ve started to take a keen interest in NoSQL. NoSQL is a term that casts a wide net. In general it encompasses data stores that eschew the traditional relational database model in favor of distributed data stores. Google, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn and a host of others have all thrown their hats in the distributed data ring. I mention those companies specifically because all of them have built their own distributed database offerings to satisfy their particular needs. Google has BigTable, a propriety technology that has an open source flavor under the Apache Software Foundation project Hadoop called HBase. Amazon has Dynamo (even more proprietary). Facebook created Cassandra and open sourced it thankfully. And LinkedIn developed Voldemort (a great name if I do say so). Twitter and more recently Digg.com have gotten behind Cassandra which has given that particular project (not even up to version 1.0 yet) a lot of press lately. I’ve started to dabble with Cassandra and HBase (really the whole Hadoop project) in an attempt to get familiar with technology but I keep coming back to something in my mind. That is that “NoSQL” is probably the stupidest possible name that could have been coined to describe all of these amazing technologies.
I mean for Christ’s sake, what idiot and perhaps more precisely, what group of idiots sat back in their little conference room chairs and said, “I know, lets define our whole emerging technology by what it ISN’T! And better yet, let’s sound like sophomoric assholes while we do it.” The name not only gives no indication of the what the technology is, other than not SQL, but it implies that SQL is somehow inferior. The first can be excused. There are plenty of meaningless acronyms in this industry. Apache’s ANT comes to mind, Another Neat Tool. Though, even that at least tells you that it’s a “neat tool.” NoSQL doesn’t even tell you that much. It could be a protest slogan for all anyone unfamiliar with databases would know. The second is just summarily false. SQL has its strengths just as distributed databases have theirs. One could argue that one solution makes more sense in particular situations but to imply that one is better that the other in all situations, as the ridiculous name does, is just stupid.
I guess I’m just frustrated that this great new movement in database technology has decided to take the lowest possible road. The constant bickering amongst techies about which technology is “the best” bores me to fucking tears. Apple vs. Microsoft vs. Linux. Open Source vs. Proprietary. Xbox 360 vs. Playstation 3 vs. Wii. It’s all bullshit. If you can’t find the merit in each of those technologies I’d argue that you’re an idiot. Yet, here goes the new guard of database pinoneers and they decide to stoke to fires of ridiculousness from the get-go.
Honestly, I’m excited as all hell about all the projects that come under the NoSQL moniker (distributed databases from now on). But the people who coined the term and the rest of the people who decided to propagate it should be ashamed of themselves.
I’m not really sure if it were the NoSQL proponents who started the ridiculousness. To me, it seemed like some of the RDBMS guys got really defensive, because they thought they had learned all about databases they’d ever need — which led to amazingly emotional and confrontational responses.
Oh, I can definitely see that scenario. It’s certainly true in just about any profession that people abhor change. You’ve got the old guard who think the way they know works just fine so any threat to that is attacked without any regard to whether new solutions can do the job better. A lot of it has to do with people feeling like their being pushed into obsolescence, which in a lot of cases is probably true. If you aren’t willing to keep up on where your profession is going then whenever something new comes along you’re going to rail against it with all your might.