Databases are annoying and generally suck. Many us developers prefer to just do stuff with data and don’t like to deal with storing data beyond a nice pretty api. However, to be an effective software developer we also understand knowing about databases is a smart idea, doesn’t mean we have to like it.
One of the biggest problems for me is I don’t really know a lot about data stores outside of RDBMS’s. NoSQL data stores do not generally make a lot of sense to me, I know about them technically, but I haven’t found (m)any good overviews which help things click on proper ways to use them. It is my hope that reading 7 Databases in 7 Weeks will be that final piece of knowledge which helps everything click into place.
A Note
I feel I should note before moving on this book is still in beta so things can, and will probably change. Most of the book covers different NoSQL databases so with my limited knowledge anything is better than nothing. I just wanted to be sure to point out as of now the book is in beta, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong or bad.
What to Expect
Over the course of the next 7 weeks I will take one database at a time and do all the exercises, to the best of my ability, and read the entire chapter. I will then describe what I have learned and what, if anything, really helped things click in my head. Finally, on week 8 I will do a wrap-up of everything I have read and my opinion of the book.
What is In the Book
Databases of course 
. The book is broken up into the following databases:
Each database will get its own post so I can do them justice. Especially since there are several different types of databases.
What I Hope to Get Out of The Book
I mostly use RDBMS’s, namely mysql, but I need to learn NoSQL, and want to learn PostgreSQL, if for nothing else to know when and where to use it. I don’t want to just use it because I can, but because I should. In the first chapter, which was an overview, this is what they promise and I think they will deliver. I don’t intend to be an expert in each database, but at least have a working knowledge of them to combat my database ignorance.
Please comeback next week for the first part on PostgreSQL.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice one Bud! Shall look forward to your posts on each.
Awesome. Is there something you are specifically curios about I can keep an eye out for?
Anxious to hear your thoughts on the book. I’ve been thinking about getting it for Riak, Mongo, and Redis.
I’ll definitely let you know my opinion I am never shy about that. Is there anything specific you want to know as I read?
When to use Riak, Why to use Mongo, and if Redis is good for anything more than a cache layer.
Memcache is not much more than a cache layer. Redis on the other hand is an extremely fast memory-based key/value store. One huge advantage it has over Memcache is persistence.
Because of this Redis is great for many things other than a cache layer. A great example of this would be Resque: https://github.com/blog/542-introducing-resque.
While it certainly doesn’t fit every use-case, we’ve been using it a lot for both internal and external (Node, Sinatra, and Rails) projects and it has performed extremely well.
- Tom