The Holy Grail (of Databases)

Choosing a data storage engine is an important decision, but it doesn’t have to be painful if you know the landscape. We’ll look at several DBMSs (and a few you’ve never heard of), compare and contrast them based on use-cases, and how to plug each into Rails (even running together!).

Authoring the book “Seven Databases in Seven Weeks” has opened up a whole world of database alternatives that I never before seriously considered. It’s an important decision to be made by research, not buzzwords – and we’ve sifted through them so you don’t have to. At the very least we can settle the Mongo v. Couch debate (hint: they’re both awesome).

This talk will include:

• A 30,000 foot view of the current database ecosystem.
• How to choose the correct database for a project (the CAP theorem).
• Thoughts by database project leaders.
• How they can play nicely in Rails 3 (separate or together), and what drivers to use.

Among the DBMSs we’ll spy are: mySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, memcached, Riak, Cassandra, HBase, MongoDB, CouchDB, Neo4J, OrientDB, and others time permitting.