NoSQL databases

Big companies around the globe are using NoSQL Databases to provide the velocity that the users expect when using their applications; companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google all use them. However, why are these databases so special? To answer this question, let's see what is the difference between SQL and NoSQL databases:

SQL databases	NoSQL databases
Table-based and hard structured	Not table-based
Encourage normalization	Encourage denormalization
Require a schema	Are schema-less
Fast	Superfast
Scalability is difficult to achieve	Scalability is extremely easy to achieve

 

Of course, there are more differences and benefits, but talking about all the advantages and the science behind them is beyond the scope of this book.

It is important to know that there are different types of NoSQL databases to solve different types of challenges. Let's learn about them.

Document databases

This is one of the most popular databases, thanks to MongoDB and CouchDB. This type of database stores the information...