Real Time DB and Programming Improvements

Oracle Corp. announced its own NoSQL database in a somewhat surprising admission regarding the future of database technology in the cloud-computing world. Elsewhere, Percona Inc. announced improvements to its MySQL database design. Though more than a year off, new JavaScript advancements aim to ease development and security.

Focal Points:

• Oracle reversed a direction it vehemently declared as risky a mere five months ago by announcing its own NoSQL database technology. While relational database management systems (RDBMS) are designed for vertically scaling deployments by making use of indexing and complex query support, NoSQL databases have advantages for cloud computing scenarios. Horizontal scaling is easily integrated and NoSQL can analyze large amounts of structured and unstructured data. NoSQL can be far faster at consuming and delivering data than an RDBMS, and Oracle has incorporated technology from the Apache Software Foundation's Hadoop project and the R statistical computing software to overcome limitations in working with NoSQL-type databases. Large and complex Web-based Internet platforms, like the ones employed at Facebook, Inc. and Digg Inc., already have NoSQL database implementations.
• Percona has improved its MySQL database to better enable usage for tasks requiring databases to reside in-memory. The new in-memory storage engine in Percona 5.5.15 now supports both BLOB and TEXT data types and can deliver improved memory handling and speed for databases in the tens or hundreds gigabytes (GBs) in size. The newly improved architecture eliminates the need to write each database change to disk and can work with varying-length data types. The company includes 37signals LLC, British Broadcasting Corp., and GroupOn Inc. among its customers.
• Details of the next major upgrade to the JavaScript platform were announced at the HTML5 Dev Conf event in San Francisco last week. Tentatively named EMCAScript 6, new modularization capabilities allow authored code to easily be shared and reused by developers. Enhanced security will enable information to be more easily hidden using private key capabilities, already available in other programming languages, to prevent malicious or unwanted access to parts of programs that need to be secure. Upgrades are also aimed at including binary support, which allows reading of a binary file or binary network protocol without representing data as strings. This should help improve memory usage and reduce the time required to complete work. A new proxy capability will potentially allow developers to employ different programming styles and underlying semantics for JavaScript objects.  EMCAScript 6 will become essential in HTML5 development as JavaScript has become a primary language used for Web development, and availability is being targeted at 2013.

Experton Group believes Oracle's introduction of NoSQL database capabilities is a major affirmation of the validity of NoSQL databases for real-time and horizontal-scaling database management. NoSQL offers significant speed advancements for in-memory database management, which will be critical for developing large cloud computing infrastructures where read/write speed and analytics are needed. IT executives already committed to Oracle databases should consider experimenting with the company's NoSQL offering, though competitors like Percona also offer compelling alternatives. Expect NoSQL databases and NoSQL-like capabilities to appear from all major database vendors in the near future. As a re-architecture will be needed, IT executives will need to determine the cost benefit and best usage of the new facilities. Though the next version of JavaScript is still some years off, the new functionalities included in the next version of the programming language demonstrate the developers' understanding of current shortcomings and required upgrades. Code reuse and security have been two of JavaScript's major pain points, especially as other programming languages have offered these designs for years if not since their inception. JavaScript programmers will have to continue to kludge their own solutions to overcome these omissions in the near term but should know that their commitment to the programming interface will prove correct as advancements will ease future work efforts.