I had read a lot about NoSQL stuff over the last few months and never really got it. What was the advantages / disadvantages, etc. I was happy with MySQL and it worked for me over the years ... why change?
Then, last week I was working with a 3rd party API and returned a big JSON response for their transactions. I wanted to store a lot of their response in a database and it looked like a huge pain. Searching around for the best ways to go about storing JSONs in MySQL I found the following comment (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3564024/storing-data-in-m...):
"CouchDB and MySQL are two very different beasts. JSON is the native way to store stuff in CouchDB. In MySQL, the best you could do is store JSON data as text in a single field. This would entirely defeat the purpose of storing it in an RDBMS and would greatly complicate every database transaction.
Don't."
Wait, NoSQL systems' default store is JSON?!? A few clicks later and I was playing with Mongo over at https://mongolab.com/ ... installing the PHP Mongo extension was a piece of cake. I was up and running in minutes.
Now, instead of developing one or several tables to store the information from the 3rd party API, I just dump their JSON response right into a Mongo collection. I can query whatever I want from that ... and there might be information that I want later on, that I didn't realize to store initially. If I had created a regular MySQL table that info wouldn't be there, but with Mongo I'm storing everything, so I'll be able to use that other info later if I want.
I don't think that Mongo is a replacement for MySQL — they are too different tools with distinct advantages and disadvantages. But Mongo definitely suits certain applications better. So, use the tool that best suits your project!
Then, last week I was working with a 3rd party API and returned a big JSON response for their transactions. I wanted to store a lot of their response in a database and it looked like a huge pain. Searching around for the best ways to go about storing JSONs in MySQL I found the following comment (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3564024/storing-data-in-m...):
"CouchDB and MySQL are two very different beasts. JSON is the native way to store stuff in CouchDB. In MySQL, the best you could do is store JSON data as text in a single field. This would entirely defeat the purpose of storing it in an RDBMS and would greatly complicate every database transaction.
Don't."
Wait, NoSQL systems' default store is JSON?!? A few clicks later and I was playing with Mongo over at https://mongolab.com/ ... installing the PHP Mongo extension was a piece of cake. I was up and running in minutes.
Now, instead of developing one or several tables to store the information from the 3rd party API, I just dump their JSON response right into a Mongo collection. I can query whatever I want from that ... and there might be information that I want later on, that I didn't realize to store initially. If I had created a regular MySQL table that info wouldn't be there, but with Mongo I'm storing everything, so I'll be able to use that other info later if I want.
I don't think that Mongo is a replacement for MySQL — they are too different tools with distinct advantages and disadvantages. But Mongo definitely suits certain applications better. So, use the tool that best suits your project!