The Laravel London Meetup in March 2016 focused on alternatives to SQL from a Laravel perspective, discussing various database types including NoSQL options like MongoDB and DynamoDB. Key takeaways included the importance of scalability, reliability, and flexibility in database solutions, along with practical examples of integrating these databases with Laravel applications. Attendees were encouraged to evaluate their infrastructure needs and consider alternatives to traditional SQL solutions.

1. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Alternatives to SQL?
a Laravel perpective

2. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Peter Coles
Chief Technology Officer - YOYODATA
Founder - Kuroi Web Development

3. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Alternatives
Key-Value Stores Document Stores
Search EnginesGraph DatabasesEvent Stores
Wide Column /
Extensible Stores

4. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Tonight’s Focus

5. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Sportsperson Encyclopaedia
A Practical Example

6. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Sportsperson Encyclopedia SQL DB Structure
Athletics
Football
People
Cricket
migration
model
repository / service class
view

7. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Sportsperson Encyclopedia Doc Store DB Structure
service class
view
model / repository

8. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using MongoDB

9. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
high availability
reliability
scalability
flexibility
affordability
What are we looking for?
“users can get at their stuff anytime”
“I don’t have to keep fixing it”
“it can grow with the business”
“working with it isn’t too expensive”
“easy to make structural changes”

10. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Database Scaling
Horizontal ScalingVertical Scaling

11. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Replicas
NoSQL DB Architecture
Nodes
Shards

12. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Document store
Proprietary API using JSON
Client for PHP (+ almost 30 others)
Switchable storage engines
Server-side scripts in Javascript
MongoDB

13. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Search Engine
Often used as a secondary store
Java API + RESTful API HTTP/JSON
Client for PHP (+ almost 15 others)
Indexes content by default
Server-side scripts possible (Java?)
Elastic

14. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Key-Value Store / Document store
Proprietary RESTful API
Client for PHP (+ almost 10 others)
Hosted so no server-side scripting
Proprietary hardware
Really, really fast at scale
DynamoDB

15. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Hosting
Local
Installation
with some
limitations
Database as
a Service
ElasticCloud
AWS ElasticSearch
AWS DynamoDB
mLab
MongoHQ
Self-managed

16. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Install PHP driver
Add jenssegers/mongodb aka Moloquent to your project
Configure mongodb connection
Use Moloquent in place of Eloquent as your base model
Use as you would Eloquent (with extras)
Using MongoDB with Laravel

17. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using MongoDB with Laravel

18. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using MongoDB with Laravel

19. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using MongoDB with Laravel

20. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using Elastic with Laravel
Add Elasticquent to your project
Configure connection (i.e. give it API endpoints)
Add the Elasticquent trait to your models
Populate Elastic from your primary store
Search

21. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using Elastic with Laravel

22. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using Elastic with Laravel

23. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using Elastic with Laravel
• totalHits
• shards
• maxScore
• timedOut
• took

24. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using DynamoDB with Laravel
Add aws/aws-sdk-php-laravel or baopham/laravel-dynamodb to your project
Set up .env entries for AWS “key”, “secret” and “region”
Wrap API methods in a base model or repository

25. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using DynamoDB with Laravel
PutItem
UpdateItem
GetItem
DeleteItem
BatchGetItem
BatchWriteItem
Query
Scan

26. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Using DynamoDB with Laravel

27. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Gotchas
Pagination
Pagination
Becoming too “Laravelised”
Unexpected exceptions
Consistency
Limits on record size
Limits on records returned
Limits on resultset size

28. Laraval London Meetup March 2016
Do consider alternatives to SQL
Be mindful as to who will support your infrastructure
Perform deep analysis on how your data is / will be used and index
Prototype important functionality
Monitor performance
Experiment and have fun
Conclusion