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sqrt17 on Dec 11, 2011 | parent | context | favorite | on: The key value store we ignored (Postgresql)

The trick is, you wouldn't necessarily. If your workload can be handled with one beefed-up lots-of-RAM-and-solid-state-drives server, you could spend your money on two of these instead of having 10 smaller servers, and be perfectly happy with it.

I don't care about what sells NoSQL products to enterprise users - there are lots of workloads where the data fits in RAM (for some reasonable quantity of RAM that money can buy) and you still prefer the durability and consistency that comes with standard SQL databases, even if you denormalize and/or use schemaless (XML or JSON) storage.

mulander on Dec 11, 2011 [–]

Each database worth its salt will use as much memory as you allow it to use in order to avoid physical IO.

Your point is valid of course. I just wanted to point it out for people that think each action in a RDBMS results in a costly IO operation.

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