Seven Weeks

Upcoming Database/NoSQL Conferences

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:18:57 -0700

Conferences for specific databases or soltion sets.

Riak @ RICON. San Francisco, Oct 10-11
PostgreSQL @ PostgreSQL Conference EU. Prague, Oct 23-26
Redis @ RedisConf. Portland, OR, Oct 22
Neo4j @ Graph Connect. San Francisco, Nov 5-6
MongoDB @ Local Mongo Confs. Everywhere, always
Couchbase @ Local Couchbase Confs. Everywhere, always

General Confs

Down the NoSQL Rabbit Hole @ Railsberry, Eric Redmond

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 15:12:09 -0700

Down the NoSQL Rabbit Hole @ Railsberry, Eric Redmond

Hashrocket Interview with Eric Redmond about Seven Databases.

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 15:06:10 -0700

Hashrocket Interview with Eric Redmond about Seven Databases.

Seven Databases in Seven Weeks Code

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 11:26:37 -0700

So I put the book code out on github. As nice as it is that Pragmatic makes all book code available in a zip file for download, I’m the type of person who will never actually bother to download it. But I’ll fork a project in an instant…

https://github.com/sevenweeks/databases

Feel free to fork and pull request any bugs you might encounter.

MemSQL

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:00:00 -0700

Another week, another database launch. This time, surprisingly, it’s not yet another NoSQL offering. Instead, it’s a loose MySQL fork written by Nikita Shamgunov, former SQL Server engineer and ACM wunderkind, called MemSQL.

The MemSQL magic sauce is supposedly that it compiles SQL queries (I’m not sure how that makes it different from prepared statements, though until I benchmark it I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt). It seems to gain its speed by keeping most of the database resident in memory, so again, I don’t see what makes it so different from other in memory databases. So far, not much there.

MemSQL might employ a coding prodigy, but VoltDB has an in-memory database backed by Mike Stonebreaker, and only one of the two men has his own wikipedia entry. Yeah, I know that’s an Appeal to accomplishment, but I’ll change my tune when MemSQL provides something a dozen other databases already don’t (not that I want to imply it won’t… it’s just getting a bit too much of the TC-VC-Industrial Complex hype for my taste).

Apache HBase on Amazon EMR

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:20:00 -0700

Apache HBase on Amazon EMR:

Finally! Amazon EMR is going to leverage the power of HBase. I love EMR, but I hated its restrictions. A step in the right direction, for sure…

AWS has already given you a lot of storage and processing options to choose from, and today we are adding a really important one.

You can now use Apache HBase to store and process extremely large amounts of data (think billions of rows and millions of columns per row) on AWS. HBase offers a number of powerful features including:

Strictly consistent reads and writes.

High write throughput.

Automatic sharding of tables.

Efficient storage of sparse data.

Low-latency data access via in-memory operations.

Direct input and output to Hadoop jobs.

Integration with Apache Hive for SQL-like queries over HBase tables, joins, and JDBC support.

HBase is formally part of the Apache Hadoop project, and runs within Amazon Elastic MapReduce. You can launch HBase jobs (version 0.92.0) from the command line or the AWS Management Console.

Seven Weeks Community

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:59:00 -0700

Seven Weeks Community:

It’s hard to install some of these databases… just like it was hard to get started with a few of the seven languages as well. With that in mind, we’re toying around with hosting a public community where people going through about the seven weeks books can ask/answer, and be searchable.

Lyrics to Seven Databases in Song

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:10:58 -0700

Relational, columnar, graph or key-value store,
document datastores too.
So much to discover, in this song we’ll cover
from each type at least one or two.

Neo4J, Postgres and HBase and Redis then
CouchDB, Mongo and Riak.
of partitions, consistency, availability:
pick two, you can’t have all three-ach.

Postgres is relational, stable, transactional.
Tables have columns and rows.
Rules, window functions and SQL for querying;
vertically is how it grows.

Riak’s key-value store implements Dynamo,
shards data out to a ring.
It’s REST-based with mapreduce link-walking functions and
vector-clocks; made in Erlang.

HBase is columnar just like BigTable:
distributed, sorted and sparse.
Hadoop’s ecosystem provides extra features but
setup’s a pain in the arse.

Oh, Mongo stores JSON—-its documents speedily
replicate so it’s webscale.
Indexes and updates your deep nested attributes
in-line, so data’s not stale.

Neo4J is so ACID compliant; this
graph database really shines.
You query through edges that connect two vertices.
No ORM-based designs.

The Redis key-value holds rich data structures;
is RAM-based or writes them to disk.
Expiry’s for caching. PUB/SUB message passing,
and queueing by block reading lists.

The CouchDB doc store has partial mapreduce;
is RESTful, crash-only and stable.
Great for embedding, ad-hoc replicating,
though don’t try to join, it’s not able.

The database world is now rich with complexity;
so much to research and know.
You have many options you’ll need to consider like…

Disk read and writing and
Bloom filters, buffering
CPU
querying
TTL
caching plus
consistent hashing and more!

Seven Databases in Song! This was so much fun to work on, and...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 08:55:33 -0700

Seven Databases in Song! This was so much fun to work on, and Jim Wilson totally deserves all the credit. Thanks also to Todd Yard for his sexy vocals.

(Seven Plus Or Minus Two) Databases For Computational Journalists

Sun, 27 May 2012 19:11:49 -0700

(Seven Plus Or Minus Two) Databases For Computational Journalists

"If an API is UX for programmers, then Redis should be in the Museum of Modern Art alongside the Mac..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:55:35 -0700

“If an API is UX for programmers, then Redis should be in the Museum of Modern Art alongside the Mac Cube.”

- Eric Redmond, Seven Databases in Seven Weeks

Buddy Lindsey: Neo4j (Week 6)

Mon, 21 May 2012 20:57:43 -0700

Buddy Lindsey: Neo4j (Week 6):

The penultimate Buddy Lindsey article about Neo4j.

Eric Redmond, author of “Seven Databases in Seven...

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:05:00 -0700

Eric Redmond, author of “Seven Databases in Seven Weeks” spends a week in the Hashrocket office and talks with Paul Elliott about his book.

This isn’t the first interview I’ve ever done… but certainly the best produced. Thanks again for the killer week, HR!

An Amazing in Depth Review (Seven DBs)

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:32:53 -0700

An Amazing in Depth Review (Seven DBs):

I loved this walkthrough. Frédéric Dumont was very fair, and I enjoyed his take. He was also one of the best and most productive beta testers.

Fred: if you’r reading this, you’re in the book acknowledgements. Thanks for all of your help.

Buddy Lindsey: CouchDB (Week 5)

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:21:17 -0700

Buddy Lindsey: CouchDB (Week 5):

Buddy’s 5th Fair and Balanced(TM) article about seven databases in seven weeks.

You need to learn Hadoop. This little data analytics engine is...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:31:03 -0700

You need to learn Hadoop. This little data analytics engine is so much more than mapreduce, and supports an ecosystem of pre-defined algorithms that makes me wonder why anyone would want to use Mongo’s built-in junk, for example.

Seven Databases song from Railsberry. Or: 7 databases in 70...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:27:07 -0700

Seven Databases song from Railsberry. Or: 7 databases in 70 seconds… Lyrics by Jim Wilson and Eric Redmond. Performed by Eric.

European "Vacation"

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:02:04 -0700

I spent a refulgent week in Jacksonville, Florida with the impossibly brilliant HashRocket team; drinking expensive whisky, debating the merits of snowboarding v. surfing, and chatting about databases. I’ll put those videos online when available. I also created the worlds dumbest web service, rather than helping Ro debug Cypher queries. Sorry man.

Next week I’ll be running (read: flying) through (read: over) Europe. London UK on Apr 17&21, Krakow Poland Apr 18-20.

Although I no longer work with MongoHQ, my standing offer still applies: anyone who wants to meet up and chat about databases (or whisky, or snowboarding, or NodeJS) tweet me: @coderoshi. It doesn’t have to be MongoDB, CouchDB, PostgreSQL, Riak, Redis, Neo4j or HBase… I have opinions on OrientDB, HypergraphDB, Cassandra and others :)

A Neo4j Talk Disguised as NoSQL Talk

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:38:00 -0700

A Neo4j Talk Disguised as NoSQL Talk:

I tried to upload one of my (Eric Redmond’s) videos about database styles. But Tumblr seems to be finicky right now, so instead, here is Jim Webber’s amazing talk Highly Connected Data Models in NOSQL Stores. It’s 80% about Neo4j, but it’s informative and captivating.

Buddy Lindsey: MongoDB (Week 4)

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:56:00 -0700

Buddy Lindsey: MongoDB (Week 4):

@BuddyLindsey’s 4th database review is Mongo. I’m still enjoying these… and so will you.