A Reflection on CUNY Presents: Trends in Database Technologies

Database defined from the lectures given in our class is a collection of related data. These data can be anything that can be recorded such as names, contact details, and the likes.

The talk of Peter Bell about the trends in database discussed the different kinds of databases. At first SQL was mentioned or was referred to be cool. SQL is a programming language used in creating databases. With this, its users are able to create and retrieve information from the database they made. Making use of this language makes coding a lot easier.

Example of SQL from Microsoft SQL Server

The database I am personally familiar with is the Microsoft SQL Server because it is the one used in our database class. In Microsoft SQL, as mentioned earlier, it makes use of codes which are easy to code. However, Microsoft SQL is not the only database that is used, from the talk on the youtube video, four kinds of NoSql Databases were specifically mentioned which were Key-Value, Big Table, Document and Graph DB. These four kinds vary depending on the kind of data the user intends to store in the database. 

1. Key- Value 
The example database which makes use of this kind of storage is the Redis. Key-Value according to the talk basically focuses on having a table which uses a unique key. It is easy to use however inefficient when querying and updating values in the database.

2. Big Table
Cassandra in particular is an example of database under the big table. Although it takes a longer time to configure, this kind of database is able to process large amounts of data which can be distributed to several machines.

3. Document
The document kind of database is usually used by its users to store data which are like document types. An example provided in the video was storing a recipe in a database where its ingredients and step by steps are also stored, instead of storing them separately in a different tables they are stored in one model which makes it more efficient for these kinds of data. A good example which makes use of this database is the Mongo DB.

4. Graph Database
Finally, the graph database makes use of graph models instead of the usual tables. This kind of database model according to the talk is the more flexible one. Today there are a lot of systems which make use of this kind of database like Twitter as mentioned, its followers, its post are linked to one another using a graph model. This kind of databsase also be used in many machines. Neo4j is one of the examples mentioned in the talk.