NoSQL Stores
Key-value, document, wide-column and graph — what each buys and forbids.
3 terms in this topic
Document Store
A store that keeps semi-structured documents — typically JSON — retrievable by key and queryable by their contents.
toolGraph Database
A store whose first-class citizens are nodes and the relationships between them, making multi-hop traversal cheap.
toolWide-Column Store
A store organised as partitions of sorted rows, designed for very high write throughput and predictable single-partition reads at large scale.
Neighbouring topics
Data Architecture
General material on structuring, storing and governing data.
Relational Modelling
Normalisation, keys, constraints and the invariants a schema enforces.
Indexing
Designing indexes per query shape, and paying for them on every write.
Query Optimisation
Reading a plan, fixing statistics, and finding the real bottleneck.
Transactions & Isolation
ACID, isolation levels, and the anomalies each level permits.
Replication
Primaries, replicas, lag, and synchronous versus asynchronous durability.
Partitioning & Sharding
Splitting data across machines, and the one-way door of a partition key.
Caching Strategies
Cache-aside, read-through, write-through and where each belongs.
Cache Invalidation
Stampedes, penetration, staleness windows and versioned keys.
CQRS
Separating the write model from the read models that serve queries.
Event Sourcing
Storing the change log as the system of record, and what that costs forever.
Change Data Capture
Turning a database's replication log into a stream, and its coupling risk.
Data Warehousing
Dimensional modelling, star schemas and analytical workloads.
Data Lakes & Lakehouses
Open formats on object storage with transactional metadata on top.
ETL & ELT
Where transformation happens, and how much raw history you keep.
Streaming Data
Windowing, watermarks, late arrivals and exactly-once semantics.
Data Governance
Ownership, lineage, quality, catalogues and who may see what.
Data Lifecycle & Retention
How long data is kept, where it ages to, and how it is actually deleted.
Polyglot Persistence
Choosing a store per workload, and the operational cost of variety.