If you know a little about databases, you must have heard the word SQL (Structured Query Language). For many years, almost all databases were used with this sub-language. But today, the size of the data and its usage areas have become so widespread that developers had to turn to alternative models for more performance in some application types.

What is NoSQL?

The concept of "NoSQL" (Not Only SQL) refers to non-relational database types. This is a distributed model designed for high-performance processing of large-scale data by storing it in a different format than relational tables. In a NoSQL database where data is used heavily, both read and write operations work extremely well.

NoSQL databases are replicated and distributed systems where multiple machines work together in clusters to provide data. The ability to store large amounts of data in a distributed manner has been instrumental in the rapid popularity of NoSQL databases. NoSQL type databases have flexible schemas created for specific data models.

Where Are NoSQL Databases Used?

NoSQL databases provide low latency while hosting large data thanks to their flexible schemas. In addition, the performance of NoSQL-style APIs used in data exchange is extremely high. Therefore, it is widely used in real-time web applications, online games.

What are the NoSQL Advantages?

With NoSQL, developers can build applications that respond faster to real-time data. Most NoSQL databases are compatible with today's modern programming languages.

NoSQL databases are designed to avoid the complexity that comes with relational databases architecture to ensure high availability.

NoSQL databases are easier to install and configure than relational databases. Service providers have produced many "tools" for developers to adapt to these databases more easily.

NoSQL offers developers the ability to implement flexible data models. A flexible data model does not limit developers to a defined schema. Dynamic schemas allow application developers to make schema changes to a build without taking the database offline. This flexibility allows them to take advantage of the data types and query options best suited to the application use case. This simplifies the use of the database and provides faster results (performance).

NoSQL databases are distributed, automatically replicating data between multiple servers or data centers, ensuring latency and consistent performance wherever users are.

NoSQL vs SQL

In relational databases, data is stored in database objects called tables. Tables consist of rows and columns. In order to be able to read and write data to these databases, all columns and their associated data types must be known beforehand, that is, schemas must be defined. In addition, "Keys" determine the relations of the tables with each other. Therefore, these keys are often required to process or read data. In NoSQL databases, data can be stored without defining the schema. This provides benefits in terms of performance.

A structure called "sharding" is used to scale NoSQL databases horizontally. This means that more machines can be added to process data across multiple servers. Therefore, when scaling horizontally with NoSQL databases, extremely large amounts of data can be processed more efficiently. In SQL databases, it may be necessary to add more power and memory to the existing machine due to vertical scaling. This will be as much as the capacity of the machine hosting the SQL.

What are NoSQL Types?

NoSQL database type is generally divided into 4.

Key-Value : Key-value pair storage databases where each key is unique and the value is a JSON etc. Stores data as a hash table in one format. There are no restrictions in the value field.

Column : It was created to store and process huge amounts of data distributed over many machines. Columns are organized by column family. It stores and manages data in the form of tables, rows and columns. Column-based NoSQL databases are widely used in data warehouses and business intelligence applications.

Graph (Graph): Graph type NoSQL databases use graph structures for queries with nodes and properties to represent and store data. They are used to store a connection or relationship network (Social networks etc.).

Document : It can be said that the most used NoSQL database model. Data is stored in semi-structured formats such as JSON. Document databases allow nested values. Document databases support querying more efficiently. For example we want to store an article data, in a relational database we break down the author information, comments, the article itself and keep them in different tables of the database. In the document type NoSQL database, they are all stored in a single document format.