Many businesses of all sizes leverage PostgreSQL as an open-source option to Oracle and other relational databases. Significant cost savings while maintaining a similar level of performance remains a preeminent reason for this switch. A robust community and the availability of commercial-grade support make Postgres worthy of consideration for your traditional database needs.
With NoSQL gaining popularity all over the technology world, you may wonder how PostgreSQL supports this new database paradigm. Let’s take a look at what functionality exists today in the database with a quick look toward the future as well.
We’ve talked about EnterpriseDB’s commercial level version of PostgreSQL previously on the blog. The company also offers a Postgres version with support for document databases and key-value stores – two of the most common NoSQL database types. Known as Postgres NoSQL for the Enterprise, this is something worthy of closer attention at companies looking for an open-source mix of relational and NoSQL databases.
This Postgres database solution combines the speed and flexibility of NoSQL with the traditional SQL database functionality required for enterprise use – most notably the support for ACID (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable) transactions. Database instances also easily integrate into the existing business data infrastructure, no matter the platform. In short, it provides the best of both worlds – relational and NoSQL.
ACID transactions are vital for business organizations that depend on the real-time validity of the relationships within their data. Many current NoSQL databases don’t offer this feature, instead following the BASE paradigm which emphasizes speed and availability over the consistency of the data. Postgres NoSQL lets companies combine unstructured and structured data; mixing the performance of NoSQL with the more formalized governance of traditional SQL.
Postgres NoSQL supports many industry standards for programmatic access and data exchange. These include Ruby, Python, and JavaScript for the former, and the JSON and XML formats in the latter case. The superior performance of PostgreSQL combined with the seamless scalability typical of a NoSQL database solution make EnterpriseDB’s combination of Postgres and NoSQL a valid option for any business desiring a flexible database infrastructure.
In a previous article looking at new features of PostgreSQL 10, we noted the relative lack of NoSQL functionality in this newest version of Postgres, slated for release later this year. The new XMLTABLE feature supports the direct querying of data stored in XML documents. Other performance improvements in version 10 bring the speed of the relational database closer to its other NoSQL brethren.
One recent enhancement in Amazon Web Services deserves mention for companies using a mixture of relational and NoSQL databases. The AWS database migration service now includes NoSQL databases, with MongoDB (as a source) and Amazon’s own DynamoDB (as a target) being the first two to be supported. This means companies with a PostgreSQL instance on AWS are able to stream data from Postgres to a DynamoDB instance.
Companies with an investment in PostgreSQL need to explore EnterpriseDB’s NoSQL option to see if any of its features make sense for adding non-traditional database formats to the corporate data infrastructure.
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Posted on May 12, 2017 | Categories News, Software Development | Tags ACID, Amazon Web Services, Database, Database Administration, Database Management, EnterpriseDB, MongoDB, NoSQL, PostgreSQL, Software, Software Development