What makes Cassandra (and NoSQL in general) a better solution to an RDBMS?

Question

Well, NoSQL is a buzzword right now so I\'ve been looking into it. I\'m yet to get my head around ColumnFamilies and SuperColumns, etc... But I have been looking at how the data

Answer 1

NoSQl databases are fine for some websites where you don't need transaction or consistency where all you are doing is presenting some data (but until you get really really large, they are not really very needed).

But if you need to enforce financial rules (or other complex data integrity rules) or internal controls or reporting and aggregating data for reporting, you need an RDBMS. I'll bet even Google uses RDBMS' for their own HR and financial data, etc.

For some web applications, you might even want a combination of both, the nosql database for some types of information, the transactional relational database for orders and other things where transactional consistency is a must.

If you develop web sites, I think you need to thoroughly understand both types of databases and the needs behind them before choosing how to handle any new functionality.

It seems to me that you have almost no knowledge of relational databases and would rather do what is easier for you personally than what is right for the project. Maybe I'm not reading that correctly, but anyone who never uses joins is suspect in terms of understanding relational databases.

You don't decide between these two based on which one seems easier to understand or which is the buzzword of the month, you decide them based on the functionality you will need, not just for the user interface but for administrative tasks, reporting, financial or other types of data auditing, government regulation, data recovery in case of a hardware failure, etc.