1.
Relational databases vs
Non-relational databases
James Serra
Big Data Evangelist
Microsoft
JamesSerra3@gmail.com
(RDBMS vs NoSQL vs Hadoop)

2.
About Me
 Microsoft, Big Data Evangelist
 In IT for 30 years, worked on many BI and DW projects
 Worked as desktop/web/database developer, DBA, BI and DW architect and developer, MDM
architect, PDW/APS developer
 Been perm employee, contractor, consultant, business owner
 Presenter at PASS Business Analytics Conference, PASS Summit, Enterprise Data World conference
 Certifications: MCSE: Data Platform, Business Intelligence; MS: Architecting Microsoft Azure
Solutions, Design and Implement Big Data Analytics Solutions, Design and Implement Cloud Data
Platform Solutions
 Blog at JamesSerra.com
 Former SQL Server MVP
 Author of book “Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server 2012”

3.
Agenda
 Definition and differences
 ACID vs BASE
 Four categories of NoSQL
 Use cases
 CAP theorem
 On-prem vs cloud
 Product categories
 Polyglot persistence
 Architecture samples

4.
Goal
My goal is to give you a high level overview of all the technologies so you know where to start and put you on
the right path to be a hero!

5.
Relational and non-relational defined
Relational databases (RDBMS, SQL Databases)
• Example: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, IBM DB2
• Mostly used in large enterprise scenarios
• Analytical RDBMS (OLAP, MPP) solutions are Analytics Platform System, Teradata, Netezza
Non-relational databases (NoSQL databases)
• Example: Azure Cosmos DB, MongoDB, Cassandra
• Four categories: Key-value stores, Wide-column stores, Document stores and Graph stores
Hadoop: Made up of Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), YARN and MapReduce

6.
Origins
Using SQL Server, I need to index a few thousand documents and search them.
No problem. I can use Full-Text Search.
I’m a healthcare company and I need to store and analyze millions of medical claims per day.
Problem. Enter Hadoop.
Using SQL Server, my internal company app needs to handle a few thousand transactions per second.
No problem. I can handle that with a nice size server.
Now I have Pokémon Go where users can enter millions of transactions per second.
Problem. Enter NoSQL.
But most enterprise data just needs an RDBMS (89% market share – Gartner).

7.
Main differences (Relational)
Pros
• Works with structured data
• Supports strict ACID transactional consistency
• Supports joins
• Built-in data integrity
• Large eco-system
• Relationships via constraints
• Limitless indexing
• Strong SQL
• OLTP and OLAP
• Most off-the-shelf applications run on RDBMS

8.
Main differences (Relational)
Cons
• Does not scale out horizontally (concurrency and data size) – only vertically, unless use sharding
• Data is normalized, meaning lots of joins, affecting speed
• Difficulty in working with semi-structured data
• Schema-on-write
• Cost

9.
Main differences (Non-relational/NoSQL)
Pros
• Works with semi-structured data (JSON, XML)
• Scales out (horizontal scaling – parallel query performance, replication)
• High concurrency, high volume random reads and writes
• Massive data stores
• Schema-free, schema-on-read
• Supports documents with different fields
• High availability
• Cost
• Simplicity of design: no “impedance mismatch”
• Finer control over availability
• Speed, due to not having to join tables

10.
Main differences (Non-relational/NoSQL)
Cons
• Weaker or eventual consistency (BASE) instead of ACID
• Limited support for joins, does not support star schema
• Data is denormalized, requiring mass updates (i.e. product name change)
• Does not have built-in data integrity (must do in code)
• No relationship enforcement
• Limited indexing
• Weak SQL
• Limited transaction support
• Slow mass updates
• Uses 10-50x more space (replication, denormalized, documents)
• Difficulty tracking schema changes over time
• Most NoSQL databases are still too immature for reliable enterprise operational applications

11.
Main differences (Hadoop)
Pros
• Not a type of database, but rather a open-source software ecosystem that allows for massively
parallel computing
• No inherent structure (no conversion to relational or JSON needed)
• Good for batch processing, large files, volume writes, parallel scans, sequential access
• Great for large, distributed data processing tasks where time isn’t a constraint (i.e. end-of-day
reports, scanning months of historical data)
• Tradeoff: In order to make deep connections between many data points, the technology
sacrifices speed
• Some NoSQL databases such as HBase are built on top of HDFS

12.
Main differences (Hadoop)
Cons
• File system, not a database
• Not good for millions of users, random access, fast individual record lookups or updates (OLTP)
• Not so great for real-time analytics
• Lacks: indexing, metadata layer, query optimizer, memory management
• Same cons at non-relational: no ACID support, data integrity, limited indexing, weak SQL, etc
• Security limitations
• More complex debugging
Hadoop adoption has slowed
• Too much hype
• Companies adopt is without understanding use cases (i.e. real big data)
• Difficulty in finding skillset
• Pace of change too fast
• Too many products involved in a solution
• Other technologies (RDBMS, NoSQL) improving and expanding use cases
• Higher learning curve

13.
ACID (RDBMS) vs BASE (NoSQL)
ATOMICITY: All data and commands in a
transaction succeed, or all fail and roll back
CONSISTENCY: All committed data must be
consistent with all data rules including
constraints, triggers, cascades, atomicity,
isolation, and durability
ISOLATION: Other operations cannot access
data that has been modified during a
transaction that has not yet completed
DURABILITY: Once a transaction is
committed, data will survive system failures,
and can be reliably recovered after an
unwanted deletion
Needed for bank transactions
Basically Available: Guaranteed Availability
Soft-state: The state of the system may change, even
without a query (because of node updates)
Eventually Consistent: The system will become
consistent over time
Ok for web page visits
ACID BASE
Strong Consistency Weak Consistency – stale data OK
Isolation Last Write Wins
Transaction Programmer Managed
Available/Consistent Available/Partition Tolerant
Robust Database/Simpler Code Simpler Database, Harder Code

14.
Data stored in tables.
Tables contain some number of columns, each of a type.
A schema describes the columns each table can have.
Every table’s data is stored in one or more rows.
Each row contains a value for every column in that table.
Rows aren’t kept in any particular order.

15.
Thanks to: Harri Kauhanan, http://www.slideshare.net/harrikauhanen/nosql-3376398
Relational stores

16.
Key-value stores offer very high speed via the
least complicated data model—anything can
be stored as a value, as long as each value is
associated with a key or name.
Key Value

17.
Key-value stores
Key “dog_12”: value_name “Stella”, value_mood “Happy”, etc

18.
Wide-column stores are fast and can be nearly as simple as key-value stores. They include a primary
key, an optional secondary key, and anything stored as a value. Also called column stores
Values
Primary key Keys and values can
be sparse or
numerous
Secondary
key

19.
Wide-column stores

20.
Document stores contain data objects that are
inherently hierarchical, tree-like structures (most
notably JSON or XML). Not Word documents!

21.
Document stores

22.
Title:
Forgotten
Bridges
Title:
Mythical
Bridges
Purchased
Date: 03-02-2011
Purchased
Date: 09-09-2011
Purchased
Date: 05-07-2011
Name:
Ian
Name:
Alan

23.
Graph store

24.
Use cases for NoSQL categories
• Key-value stores: [Redis] For cache, queues, fit in memory, rapidly changing data, store blob data.
Examples: shopping cart, session data, leaderboards, stock prices. Fastest performance
• Wide-column stores: [Cassandra] Real-time querying of random (non-sequential) data, huge
number of writes, sensors. Examples: Web analytics, time series analytics, real-time data analysis,
banking industry. Internet scale
• Document stores: [MongoDB] Flexible schemas, dynamic queries, defined indexes, good
performance on big DB. Examples: order data, customer data, log data, product catalog, user
generated content (chat sessions, tweets, blog posts, ratings, comments). Fastest development
• Graph databases: [Neo4j] Graph-style data, social network, master data management, network and
IT operations. Examples: social relations, real-time recommendations, fraud detection, identity and
access management, graph-based search, web browsing, portfolio analytics, gene sequencing, class
curriculum
Note: Many NoSQL solutions are now multi-model

25.
Velocity
Volume Per
Day
Real-world
Transactions
Per Day
Real-world
Transactions
Per Second
Relational DB Document DB Key Value or
Wide Column
8 GB 8.64B 100,000 As Is
86 GB 86.4B 1M Tuned* As Is
432 GB 432B 5M Appliance Tuned* As Is
864 GB 864B 10M Clustered
Appliance
Clustered
Servers
Tuned*
8,640 GB 8.64T 100M Many
Clustered
Servers
Clustered
Servers
43,200 GB 43.2T 500M Many
Clustered
Servers
* Tuned means tuning the model, queries, and/or hardware (more CPU, RAM, and Flash)

26.
Focus of different data models
…you may not have the data volume for NoSQL (yet), but there are other reasons to use
NoSQL (semi-structured data, schemaless, high availability, etc)

27.
Relational NewSQL stores are designed for web-scale
applications, but still require up-front schemas, joins, and
table management that can be labor intensive.
Blend RDBMS with NoSQL: provide the same scalable
performance of NoSQL systems for OLTP read-write
workloads while still maintaining the ACID guarantees of
a traditional relational database system.

28.
Use case for different database technologies
• Traditional OLTP business systems (i.e. ERP, CRM, In-house app): relational database (RDBMS)
• Data warehouses (OLAP): relational database (SMP or MPP)
• Web and mobile global OLTP applications: non-relational database (NoSQL)
• Data lake: Hadoop
• Relational and scalable OLTP: NewSQL

29.
CAP Theorem
Impossible for any shared data system to guarantee simultaneously all of the
following three properties:
Consistency: Once data is written, all future requests will contain the data. “Is
the data I’m looking at now the same if I look at it somewhere else?”
Availability: The database is always available and responsive. “What happens
if my database goes down?”
Partitioning: If part of the database is unavailable, other parts are unaffected.
“What if my data is on a different node?”
Relational: CA (i.e. SQL Server with no replication)
Non-relational: AP (Cassandra, CoachDB, Riak); CP (Hbase, Cosmos DB, MongoDB, Redis)
NoSQL can’t be both consistent and available. If two nodes (A and B) and B goes down, if
the A node takes requests, it is available but not consistent with B node. If A node stops
taking requests, it remains consistent with B node but it is not available. RDBMS is
consistent and available because it only has one node/partition (so no partition tolerance)

30.
Microsoft data platform solutions
Product Category Description More Info
SQL Server 2016 RDBMS Earned top spot in Gartner’s Operational Database magic
quadrant. JSON support
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-
cloud/products/sql-server-2016/
SQL Database RDBMS/DBaaS Cloud-based service that is provisioned and scaled quickly.
Has built-in high availability and disaster recovery. JSON
support
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/sql-database/
SQL Data Warehouse MPP RDBMS/DBaaS Cloud-based service that handles relational big data.
Provision and scale quickly. Can pause service to reduce
cost
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/sql-data-warehouse/
Analytics Platform System (APS) MPP RDBMS Big data analytics appliance for high performance and
seamless integration of all your data
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-
cloud/products/analytics-platform-
system/
Azure Data Lake Store Hadoop storage Removes the complexities of ingesting and storing all of
your data while making it faster to get up and running with
batch, streaming, and interactive analytics
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/data-lake-store/
Azure Data Lake Analytics On-demand analytics job
service/Big Data-as-a-
service
Cloud-based service that dynamically provisions resources
so you can run queries on exabytes of data. Includes U-
SQL, a new big data query language
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/data-lake-analytics/
HDInsight PaaS Hadoop compute A managed Apache Hadoop, Spark, R, HBase, and Storm
cloud service made easy
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/hdinsight/
Azure Cosmos DB PaaS NoSQL: Document
Store
Get your apps up and running in hours with a fully
managed NoSQL database service that indexes, stores, and
queries data using familiar SQL syntax
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/cosmos-db/
Azure Table Storage PaaS NoSQL: Key-value
Store
Store large amount of semi-structured data in the cloud https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/storage/tables/

31.
PolyBase
Query relational and non-relational data with T-SQL

32.
Azure Cosmos DB consistency options
• Strong, which is the slowest of the four, but is guaranteed to always return correct data
• Bounded staleness, which ensures that an application will see changes in the order in which they were
made. This option does allow an application to see out-of-date data, but only within a specified
window, e.g., 500 milliseconds
• Session, which ensures that an application always sees its own writes correctly, but allows access to
potentially out-of-date or out-of-order data written by other applications
• Consistent Prefix (new), updates returned are some prefix of all the updates, with no gaps
• Eventual, which provides the fastest access, but also has the highest chance of returning out-of-date
data

33.
On-prem vs Cloud
• On-prem: SQL Server, APS, MongoDB, Oracle, Cassandra, Neo4J
• IaaS Cloud: SQL Server in Azure VM, Oracle in Azure VM
• DBaaS/PaaS Cloud: SQL Database, SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Cosmos DB, Redshift, RDS, MongoLab

34.
41

35.
Product Categories
, Azure Cosmos DB, Coachbase
, APS, SQL DW
SQL Database, SQLite
, PostgreSQL
, Redis
, OrientDB

36.
Product Categories
Rankings from
db-engines.com

37.
Azure Product Categories
SQL DW
ADLS, ADLA
(PaaS)
(IaaS)
PostgreSQL

38.
db-engines.com/en/ranking
Method of calculation:
• Number of mentions of the system
on websites
• General interest in the system
• Frequency of technical discussions
about the system
• Number of job offers, in which the
system is mentioned
• Number of profiles in professional
networks, in which the system is
mentioned
• Relevance in social networks
db-engines.com/en/ranking_definition

39.
db-engines.com/en/ranking_categories
NoSQL = 14%

40.
Polyglot Persistence
• Sometimes a relational store is the right choice, sometimes a NoSQL store is the right choice
• Sometimes you need more than one store: Using the right tool for the right job

41.
Summary
Choose NoSQL when…
• You are bringing in new data with a lot of volume and/or variety
• Your data is non-relational/semi-structured
• Your team will be trained in these new technologies (NoSQL)
• You have enough information to correctly select the type and product of NoSQL for your situation
• You can relax transactional consistency when scalability or performance is more important
• You can service a large number of user requests vs rigorously enforcing business rules
Relational databases are created for strong consistency, but at the cost of speed and scale. NoSQL slightly sacrifices
consistency across nodes for both speed and scalability.
NoSQL and Hadoop are viable technologies for a subset of specialized needs and use cases.
Lines are getting blurred – do your homework!

42.
Bottom line!
• RDBMS for enterprise OLTP and ACID compliance, or db’s under 5TB
• NoSQL for scaled OLTP and JSON documents
• Hadoop for big data analytics (OLAP)

43.
Resources
 Relational database vs Non-relational databases: http://bit.ly/1HXn2Rt
 Types of NoSQL databases: http://bit.ly/1HXn8Zl
 What is Polyglot Persistence? http://bit.ly/1HXnhMm
 Hadoop and Data Warehouses: http://bit.ly/1xuXfu9
 Hadoop and Microsoft: http://bit.ly/20Cg2hA

44.
Q & A ?
James Serra, Big Data Evangelist
Email me at: JamesSerra3@gmail.com
Follow me at: @JamesSerra
Link to me at: www.linkedin.com/in/JamesSerra
Visit my blog at: JamesSerra.com (where this slide deck is posted via the “Presentations” link on the top menu)