Another NoSQL Database : FluidDB

FluidDB is another database in the NoSQL category. It is a cloud based data store and follows the Wiki style approach for data storage. By Wiki style user can create objects in the FluidDB space and modify the existing one. Yet it uses a permission model which differentiates the it from being exact Wiki like.

FluidDB provides HTTP API interface with JSON and provides the HTTP Basic Authentication. FluidDB is in the early private Alpha stage and exposed to only limited number of users. A Sandbox is available where anyone can play with the database and for more detail look one can request the private access by sending the FluidDB Team a Mail request.

FluidDB is basically divided into four parts: 1)User 2)Namespace 3)Tag 4)Object. The User is the primary entity like in any other case. User will create Namespaces, Tags or Objects. Namespace is a logical name and physical separation which primarily describes the Subject the User is interested in like Movie, Sport, Book, etc. Tags are the attributes which describe the subject further in detail like Genre, Year and Awards Tags in Movies Namespace. Tags can exist without Namespaces also like Event, Hot, New can be used irrespective of the subject. Objects are the key entities as they contains actual data. An Object can be created with a String value like http://twitter.com/dhavaln or Die Hard With Vengeance as a topic which can be expressed in detail with various Tags.

An Object can be annotated with Tags from any User or any Namespace. By attaching a Tag to an Object user can provide additional information as a Tag Value for that Object like:

Object: Die Hard With Vengeance
Tags:
  Movie=
  Movie/Genre=Action
  Movie/Year=1995

As you can see same name can be used as a Namespace and as a Tag also. Tag may not contain any value alternatively known as Marker Tags.

FluidDB provides a simple query mechanism through which Objects can be search in the FluidDB space with Tag and Tag values. The following query will return all the Objects having Movie/Year value as 1995.

/Movie/Year = 1995

/Movie/Year > 1995 will return all Objects having Movie/Year value greater than 1995. There are many other conditional approaches provided by FluidDB for searching and can be found here.

Many developers has started using the interesting FluidDB and created API libraries for various languages which can be found here. I have already started using the database with JFluidDB and finding its usefulness in many cases.

The simple HTTP and JSON based interface makes FluidDB widely acceptable in many problem domains in various languages and frameworks.

Social Databases

    Like many others i am not a big fan of SQL databases available today. But every application needs some or the other ways to persist the information. Being a Java programmer there are many options available to avoid raw SQL interaction during the development through Hibernate, JDO or JPA. But these all at the end lands at relational database only.

    Soon i started gaining familiarity with the Google Bigtable and Amazon Dynamo for their non-relational approach and why relational database will not help for their kind of applications. Well the approach was shocking and different but fascinated and proven at the same time. Meanwhile many developers realized that they might need different kind of database altogether to help their applications grow and respond faster.

    This realization resulted into many unorthodox, simple yet powerful databases which now-a-days falls into the Social Database category.

Neo4j

    Neo4j is a graph database. It is an embedded, disk-based, fully transactional Java persistence engine that stores data structures rather than in tables. The database is quite small in size, approx <500k jar. It provides objected-oriented API to interact with the database.

   Besides such a small database, Neo4j provides all the usual database features like ACID transaction, durable persistence, transaction recovery and concurrency control.

    

    For further information you can look out this presentation video and slides by Neo4j creator.

Cassandra

    Cassandra is a highly scallable second-generation distributed key-value based database. Initially developed at Facebook and now resides in Apache Incubator. Cassandra combines best features from Amazon Dynamo and Google Bigtable. Cassandra just like Neo4j is tested and proven for high-volume, high-transaction environments. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Cisco, Mahalo and many more uses Cassandra in their applications.

    

    Cassandra follows the decentralized model where every node in the cluster is having identical information so there is no single point failure. Like many clustered databases, Cassandra follows the Eventually Consistent model and supports advanced features like Read Repair and Hinted Handoff to minimize inconsistency windows. 

    

     There are lot of presentations for the same can be found at SlideShare.net. 

FluidDB

    I have just started my working on this new kind of database. FluidDB is a hosted online cloud database. FluidDB follows the Wiki kind of approach where either user or application can created objects and modify the existing objects. Though it doesn't follow the Wiki model as it is and maintains certain restriction like permission and strict data type. It provides an efficient query mechanism to search through the database. The database provides simple HTTP request API for access.

    

    The database is in the private alpha as of now and you might get an access after sending the FluidDB team a mail API access request. As such i have not explored the database fully but there are plenty of ways this database can be used in today's applications.

     

    Tickery is a simple Twitter based application developed by team FluidDB team for demonstration purpose. 

  With the growing amount of social applications and their complexities we might see varying amount of databases for different requires over the period of time.

    Though these databases will not help you remove the relational databases altogether but will help you deliver the desired complex functionalities fast, easy and with less pain.