Presentation: TweetA Call for Sanity in NoSQL

The techniques, algorithms, and technologies for managing data have progressed greatly since the advent of the relational database 40 years ago, yet applications are getting HARDER to build, not easier. NoSQL provides scalability at the cost of sanity.

The complexities we face as software engineers runs deep inside the industry. We debate whether or not to "normalize" or "denormalize" our data, not recognizing the fact that you have to make that tradeoff at all is a sign of something seriously wrong. We have become so accustomed to painful schema implementations that people consider "schemaless" to be a feature. We use eventually consistent databases that require extremely intricate read-repair algorithms in order to work properly. Finally, we build systems that fall apart due to the slightest human mistake. That anyone – and seemingly everyone – runs systems with any of these complexities is insane. Sanity is within your reach, but you need to work for it. You need to stop placing the relational database on a holy pedestal and instead think of data systems from first principles. It turns out the technology is already here in order to build data systems that are scalable AND easy to reason about. In this talk, you'll learn how.