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rodhilton's review against another edition
4.0
The world of NoSQL is still very young and very fresh. Most books about relational databases tend to be about a specific one, like Oracle or MySQL, and tend to deal with specific issues, such as performance or scalability but very few developers are using NoSQL solutions on such a scale as to warrant those kinds of treatments. The questions developers have about NoSQL don't call for books like "High Performance MongoDB: Optimization, Backups, and Replication", but that exact book exists for MySQL.
Most developers are in the dipping-a-toe-in phase of NoSQL adoption. And the questions most developers have are:
1) What the heck is NoSQL?
2) What are the different kinds of NoSQL databases?
3) What does it look like to use them?
4) Which NoSQL database should I use?
That last question is the one that most people get hung up on. NoSQL is an umbrella term that covers a lot of different technology, and the individual elements under this umbrella can differ greatly. A data model that lends itself well to a particular NoSQL database might be completely wrong on another NoSQL database.
NoSQL Distilled aims to be a very short and concise introduction to this umbrella term, with a particular focus on answering this last question. Rather than simply being a series of chapters, each one covering a different NoSQL database, Distilled tries to pull out the elements common to these technologies and focus on the underlying principles. In a way, it's like Fowler's other books, in that the first half is general principles, and the second half is specifics that go deeper on those principles. We don't really see any actual NoSQL databases until about the halfway point, after Distilled has explained the various types of clustering strategies, performance concerns, and patterns of NoSQL databases in general.
I liked this approach very much. It allows the reader to focus on what actually matters about NoSQL databases, such as why they exist, what they're good at, what they're bad at, and what principles they follow, before getting into specifics like syntax or deployment.
Martin Fowler has always been one of my favorite tech authors, and though his co-author is new to me, I definitely felt like I was reading a typical Fowler book. Occasionally dry but still dense with information, covered competently and explained well. I also appreciated the complete lack of marketing/hype, which is present in most other NoSQL books (often written by people affiliated with the projects). NoSQL distilled is clear in that it says you should probably use a relational database still, and only use NoSQL if you can prove it has a particular benefit for you.
NoSQL distilled does not go deep into anything. If you're experienced with various NoSQL databases, this book will be largely useless to you. But if you've lived your life in a relational world and you're curious about what kind of benefits you could get by using a document database or a key-value store or a graph database, NoSQL distilled will be very enlightening. It does an admirable job of answering the "when to use/when not to use" question, though I do feel like it could have gone into more detail in answering those questions.
Most developers are in the dipping-a-toe-in phase of NoSQL adoption. And the questions most developers have are:
1) What the heck is NoSQL?
2) What are the different kinds of NoSQL databases?
3) What does it look like to use them?
4) Which NoSQL database should I use?
That last question is the one that most people get hung up on. NoSQL is an umbrella term that covers a lot of different technology, and the individual elements under this umbrella can differ greatly. A data model that lends itself well to a particular NoSQL database might be completely wrong on another NoSQL database.
NoSQL Distilled aims to be a very short and concise introduction to this umbrella term, with a particular focus on answering this last question. Rather than simply being a series of chapters, each one covering a different NoSQL database, Distilled tries to pull out the elements common to these technologies and focus on the underlying principles. In a way, it's like Fowler's other books, in that the first half is general principles, and the second half is specifics that go deeper on those principles. We don't really see any actual NoSQL databases until about the halfway point, after Distilled has explained the various types of clustering strategies, performance concerns, and patterns of NoSQL databases in general.
I liked this approach very much. It allows the reader to focus on what actually matters about NoSQL databases, such as why they exist, what they're good at, what they're bad at, and what principles they follow, before getting into specifics like syntax or deployment.
Martin Fowler has always been one of my favorite tech authors, and though his co-author is new to me, I definitely felt like I was reading a typical Fowler book. Occasionally dry but still dense with information, covered competently and explained well. I also appreciated the complete lack of marketing/hype, which is present in most other NoSQL books (often written by people affiliated with the projects). NoSQL distilled is clear in that it says you should probably use a relational database still, and only use NoSQL if you can prove it has a particular benefit for you.
NoSQL distilled does not go deep into anything. If you're experienced with various NoSQL databases, this book will be largely useless to you. But if you've lived your life in a relational world and you're curious about what kind of benefits you could get by using a document database or a key-value store or a graph database, NoSQL distilled will be very enlightening. It does an admirable job of answering the "when to use/when not to use" question, though I do feel like it could have gone into more detail in answering those questions.
james_j_igoe's review
5.0
For developers, an excellent overview and primer of the new database types. Although I think that one needs a good understanding of numerous technology-related topics, this is a fairly light introduction covering the NoSQL incarnations.
mckenzierichardson's review against another edition
5.0
For more reviews, check out my blog: Craft-Cycle
I bought this book for a Database Management Systems course and found it very helpful as a brief overview of NoSQL databases.
The book is broken into two parts: Understand and Implement. In the first, the authors give a survey of some basic information regarding things like aggregate data models, distribution models, consistency, map-reduce, and roughly what NoSQL is.
In the second part, more details are given about the types of NoSQL databases including key-value, document, column-family stores, and graph databases. Each chapter runs through the features of the database type as well as suitable use cases and when not to use each type. There is also a comparison chart mapping the terms between traditional RDBMS and a representative database for each type. There are also chapters touching on schema migrations, polyglot persistence, and how to choose a database.
The chapters are relatively short, making them less intimidating. It is a book written for beginners and on the whole I found it easy to understand. Throughout the book there are helpful visualizations and simple examples.
Because of the simplicity of the book, I would not recommend it to those already familiar with NoSQL. It is very clearly meant for beginners and because of this does not include in-depth examples. It is meant as a survey of NoSQL and I found it very adequate for that goal. Good for those interesting in learning more about NoSQL and as a beginner guide for those considering implementing NoSQL. It is a good place to start if you are thinking of using a NoSQL database to point you in the right direction.
I bought this book for a Database Management Systems course and found it very helpful as a brief overview of NoSQL databases.
The book is broken into two parts: Understand and Implement. In the first, the authors give a survey of some basic information regarding things like aggregate data models, distribution models, consistency, map-reduce, and roughly what NoSQL is.
In the second part, more details are given about the types of NoSQL databases including key-value, document, column-family stores, and graph databases. Each chapter runs through the features of the database type as well as suitable use cases and when not to use each type. There is also a comparison chart mapping the terms between traditional RDBMS and a representative database for each type. There are also chapters touching on schema migrations, polyglot persistence, and how to choose a database.
The chapters are relatively short, making them less intimidating. It is a book written for beginners and on the whole I found it easy to understand. Throughout the book there are helpful visualizations and simple examples.
Because of the simplicity of the book, I would not recommend it to those already familiar with NoSQL. It is very clearly meant for beginners and because of this does not include in-depth examples. It is meant as a survey of NoSQL and I found it very adequate for that goal. Good for those interesting in learning more about NoSQL and as a beginner guide for those considering implementing NoSQL. It is a good place to start if you are thinking of using a NoSQL database to point you in the right direction.
albcorp's review against another edition
4.0
This book is clear about what it sets out to achieve, namely a concise survey of NoSQL technologies, and it does an excellent job.
datura's review against another edition
4.0
A short introduction to NoSQL branch of data storage. There is no code samples here, just a general overview of each of the NoSQL types of databases.
This was a good overview book. Anyone who is thinking about choosing a NoSQL database for their next project should read this book to get a better idea of how NoSQL fits in with the rest of the data storage world.
This was a good overview book. Anyone who is thinking about choosing a NoSQL database for their next project should read this book to get a better idea of how NoSQL fits in with the rest of the data storage world.
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