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Whitepapers Postgres Advances To Meet NoSQL Challenges PDF
Whitepapers Postgres Advances To Meet NoSQL Challenges PDF
Challenges
An EnterpriseDB
White Paper
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Key-value Store 8
Non-durable Tables 9
Scalability 9
About EnterpriseDB 11
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 2
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
Introduction
Data has changed. Bigger volumes, needs for faster processing and
new data types mean organizations today are facing new problems. Big
Data problems. In response, many organizations have begun to ask
whether they need a new solution, such as a NoSQL solution, to
augment the capabilities of their longstanding relational databases to
solve their new problems.
It’s important to note that NoSQL is not one thing. It’s an umbrella term
for different niche technologies, each addressing a single problem. The
four most prominent NoSQL technologies most often referenced in Big
Data conversations are:
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 3
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
▪ Key-value stores
▪ Document databases
▪ Column stores
▪ Graph databases
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 4
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
NoSQL skills are hard to come by, expensive to obtain and not
portable.
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 5
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
However, as Postgres has become more feature rich over the past 15
years, that original design hurdle has turned into a unique advantage.
The fact that Postgres is an object-relational database means new
capabilities could be developed as needs evolved and plugged into the
database seamlessly. Using this level of extensibility, Postgres
developers were able to build new features and capabilities as needs
emerged. The perfect examples are JSON for document storage
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 6
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
Postgres offers robust support for JSON. Postgres has a JSON data
type, which validates and stores JSON text and provides functions for
extracting elements from JSON values. And, it offers the ability to easily
encode query result sets using JSON. This last piece of functionality is
particularly important, as it means that applications that prefer to work
natively with JSON can easily obtain their data from Postgres in JSON.
In addition to the native JSON data type, Postgres v9.3 added a JSON
parser and a variety of JSON functions. This means web application
developers don't need translation layers in the code between the
database and the web framework that uses JSON. JSON-formatted
data can be sent directly to the database where Postgres will not only
store the data, but properly validate it as well. With JSON functions,
Postgres can read relational data from a table and return it to the
application as valid JSON formatted strings. And, the relational data
can be returned as JSON for either a single value or an entire record.
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 7
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
HStore is not hierarchical, but the HStore data type offers advanced
indexing support, which makes it the solution of choice for many
applications. It is particularly useful for data with sparsely populated
attributes. Instead of creating a large number of columns, each of
which will be non-null for only a small percentage of the records in the
table, database administrators can create a single HStore column and
include, for each row, only those keys which pertain to that record.
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 8
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
Non-durable Tables
Postgres also has the capacity to sacrifice some data durability to
enhance performance. In v9.2, Postgres introduced unlogged tables
(which in the NoSQL world are called non-durable tables). This means
that in order to get better application performance, users can prioritize
data, and designate some data sets whose loss is acceptable should a
crash occur.
Scalability
The sharding capability of some NoSQL technologies is considered
particularly useful, but only in very limited circumstances. Postgres,
meanwhile, achieves the same goal but at the application level, and
there are benefits to this approach.
This makes sense for users who, for example, need to split up data
geographically so that data is closer to the people who most use it, or
for applications that split up data using a time element so that older
data is easily disposed of in bulk. This is a straightforward process in
Postgres and addresses many of the needs that users articulate when
they think they need a NoSQL solution to leverage sharding.
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 9
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 10
Postgres Advances to Meet NoSQL Challenges
SQL databases like Postgres are closing the gap that motivated
the rise and development of NoSQL technologies, and will
continue to provide capabilities that NoSQL technologies simply
cannot.
The successful relational database of today and the future will be able
to integrate and federate data from multiple external systems and in
multiple formats including NoSQL varieties of databases. Recognition
of long-standing capabilities that have new uses and continuing
advances will enable Postgres to play a significant role in the data
center even as new data challenges emerge.
Get Started Today. Let EnterpriseDB help you address your emerging
data demands with Postgres. Contact us at +1-877-377-4352 or +1-
781-357-3390, or send an email to sales@enterprisedb.com to get
started.
About EnterpriseDB
© 2014 EnterpriseDB Corporation. All rights reserved. EnterpriseDB and Postgres Plus are trademarks of
EnterpriseDB Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
http://www.enterprisedb.com
Page: 11