NoSQL, the Database for the Cloud

NoSQL databases, the next generation databases, are a cost-effective alternative to relational databases. They have been successfully used by Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook to achieve massive parallelism, unlimited scalability and high availability. For enterprises, they can be well suited for Cloud Computing, Social Networking and Web 2.0 applications. However, they are not meant to handle mission-critical and highly transactional applications, therefore they cannot totally replace Relation Database Management Systems (RDBMS). In this whitepaper, the authors describe various breeds, choices, and tradeoffs to enable enterprises to make informed decisions to optimize the utilization of NoSQL databases.