Franck Pachot (@FranckPachot ) is an RDBMS expert and wrote a really nice response to an earlier post I wrote about how DynamoDB scales where relational databases don't. I highly recommend reading it.
Link below, with 3 thoughts from me to follow.
Link below, with 3 thoughts from me to follow.
1. I'll trust Franck on the time complexity point for joins. He knows waaay more about this (and buffers & pages) than I do, so I'm a bit out over my skis there.
That said, I do think the general point about NoSQL (and DynamoDB in particular) + scalability hold up
(cont.)
That said, I do think the general point about NoSQL (and DynamoDB in particular) + scalability hold up
(cont.)
2. Franck notes that SQL isn't a black box because you can use EXPLAIN. And it's true! But it's also absurdly hard to read & hard to understand how it's going to interact as data scales.
With DynamoDB, you learn 3 concepts and the mental model around scalability works.
(cont.)
With DynamoDB, you learn 3 concepts and the mental model around scalability works.
(cont.)
3. Even if time complexity of joins aren't as bad as mentioned, joins still make it hard to horizontally scale your data without doing cross-node joins, which limits your options as you scale.
(cont.)
(cont.)
Again, really great post by @FranckPachot , and I'm grateful for the conversation! I love learning about this stuff. :)
