In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the relational database. In this article we will take a quick look at the what is NewSQL.

What is NewSQL?

NewSQL stands for new scalable and high performance SQL Database vendors. The products sold by NewSQL vendors are horizontally scalable. NewSQL is not kind of databases but it is about vendors who supports emerging data products with relational database properties (like ACID, Transaction etc.) along with high performance. Products from NewSQL vendors usually follow in memory data for speedy access as well are available immediate scalability.

NewSQL term was coined by 451 groups analyst Matthew Aslett in this particular blog post.

On the definition of NewSQL, Aslett writes:

“NewSQL” is our shorthand for the various new scalable/high performance SQL database vendors. We have previously referred to these products as ‘ScalableSQL‘ to differentiate them from the incumbent relational database products. Since this implies horizontal scalability, which is not necessarily a feature of all the products, we adopted the term ‘NewSQL’ in the new report. And to clarify, like NoSQL, NewSQL is not to be taken too literally: the new thing about the NewSQL vendors is the vendor, not the SQL.

In other words - NewSQL incorporates the concepts and principles of Structured Query Language (SQL) and NoSQL languages. It combines reliability of SQL with the speed and performance of NoSQL.

Categories of NewSQL

There are three major categories of the NewSQL

New Architecture – In this framework each node owns a subset of the data and queries are split into smaller query to sent to nodes to process the data. E.g. NuoDB, Clustrix, VoltDB

MySQL Engines – Highly Optimized storage engine for SQL with the interface of MySQ Lare the example of such category. E.g. InnoDB, Akiban

Transparent Sharding – This system automatically split database across multiple nodes. E.g. Scalearc 

Summary

In simple words – NewSQL is kind of database following relational database principals and provides scalability like NoSQL.

Tomorrow

In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about the Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)