Musings on the Human Condition

Key/value databases (KVDs) are emerging as a potential challenge to the long-held monopoly of relational databases. The weakly-typed nature of KVDs is not unlike the growing trend with weakly-typed programming languages such as VB, JavaScript, PHP, Python and Perl (programming by convention -- "strong typing is for weak programmers"). The KVD trend is emerging in concert with the maturing of cloud computing (see my post from yesterday). The KVD paradigm simplifies object-data mapping but suffers from data duplication in exchange for improved scalability (perhaps an acceptable tradeoff, given that disk space is cheap). The biggest mind-shift is that the responsibility for ensuring data integrity is moved to the application.

This excellent white paper (PDF) from a group of professors at Berkeley serves to launch what promises to be an influential blog on cloud computing . The authors of the paper have shown foresight in providing an executive summary and a video so that individuals can absorb the material at the level that suits them. Start with the executive summary on the main page. And if you're completely averse to reading, check out the video .