NoSQL: Distributed and Scalable Non-Relational Database Systems

There’s an interesting shift happening in the world of Web-scale data stores. A whole new breed of scalable data stores is gaining popularity very quickly. The traditional LAMP stack is starting to look like a thing of the past. For a few years now, memcached has often appeared right next to MySQL, and now the whole “data tier” is being shaken up. While some might see it as a move away from MySQL and PostgreSQL, the traditional open source relational data stores, it’s actually a higher-level change. Much of this is change is the result of a few revelations:

1. a relational database isn’t always the model or system for every piece of data
2. relational databases are tricky to scale (especially if you start with a single monolithic configuration–they aren’t distributed by design)
3. normalization often hurts performance
4. in many applications, primary key look-ups are all you need

The new…

1. InnoDB Performance Monitoring with innotop
2. MySQL Upgrade Testing
3. Some Reasonable Defaults for MySQL Settings
4. Hacking with CouchDB
5. An Introduction to CouchDB