by Angela Guess
Jeremy Zawodny wrote a passionate response to a recent article, NoSQL is a Premature Optimization. Zawodny starts his argument by quoting the article: “I would argue that starting with NoSQL because you think you might someday have enough traffic and scale to warrant it is a premature optimization, and as such, should be avoided by smaller and even medium sized organizations. You will have plenty of time to switch to NoSQL as and if it becomes helpful. Until that time, NoSQL is an expensive distraction you don’t need.” Zawodny’s response: “Uhm… WHAT?!”
He continues, “I’ve spent more than a few years using MySQL and have been using some NoSQL systems for the last year or so in a fairly busy environment. And scaling is only one of the considerations that factor into those decisions. Features matter too, you know. I really like MongoDB‘s built-in sharding and replica sets. They kick ass. And Redis is an awesome in-memory data store that goes beyond what something like memcached offers. And being schema-less makes a whole hell of a lot of sense in some applications–probably A LOT of applications. NoSQL exists for a reason–because they ARE useful to a lot of people. This isn’t some stupid bubble. And to make switching data stores sound like something that ‘you will have plenty of time for’ is outright nuts. There’s a lot of work involved. More than you probably expect. (Ask me how I know…)”
photo credit: mollyollyoxenfree
