Does NoSQL and SQL together still mean two data copies?

Please note: This article by FaiCom Vice President of Engineering Services Randal Hoff originally appeared in the 2017 DZone Guide to Databases.

Note: c-treeACE became FairCom DB in Novemeber 2020.

To put it simply, the database world has been divided into two factions: SQL and NoSQL. The common belief has been the two could co-exist in an organization’s database ecosystem, but typically only through some form of ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) process that requires making a copy of the data and altering it to achieve SQL compatibility. 

However, the downside of an ETL strategy is you now have two copies of the same data that you need to keep in sync, which is not optimal for several reasons. The major one is that if you are relying on the SQL version of the data to perform reports and make business decisions, those decisions will only be as current as your most recent ETL operation. Other items to consider include costs of additional computing resources, storage space, dealing with ETL error logs, etc.

FairCom DB has made it possible for NoSQL and SQL to co-exist in the ever-changing database technology world by allowing NoSQL and SQL operations over one single instance of data. This is made possible because c-treeACE implements a lot of the database fundamentals at the NoSQL level that are required by a full relational DBMS. This is just one example of the powerful capabilities that the FairCom DB multimodel database can provide to organizations.

See what more than 40 percent of the Fortune 100 companies already know. It is no longer a NoSQL vs. SQL world. It is now a NoSQL and SQL world over one single instance of data with FairCom DB. Learn more about FairCom DB at faircom.com/products/faircom-db.

You can view the DZone Guide to Databases here.