The Role of Data Architecture in NOSQL

DAMA - Philadelphia / Delaware Valley Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Tom Haughey President InfoModel LLC 868 Woodfield Road Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 201 755 3350 [email protected]

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Role of Data Architecture in NOSQL

What Advances Occurred in DBMSs?

The emergence of NOSQL data stores and new DBMSs Column oriented DBMSs Data warehouse appliances New database technologies, such as business intelligence DBMSs Re-emergence of the Enterprise Data Warehouse

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Why NOSQL?
Stands for Not Only SQL or even Not SQL RDBMSs (they say) have shown poor performance on dataintensive applications, including: Indexing a large number of documents Serving pages on high-traffic websites Handling the volumes of social networking data Delivering streaming media Typical RDBMS implementations (they say) are tuned for small but frequent read/write transactions or for large batch transactions with rare write access NOSQL (they also say) can service heavy read/write workloads (yes but for certain types of workloads, which they dont say) Real-world NOSQL deployments include: Digg's 3 TB for green badges (markers that indicate stories upvoted by others in a social network) Facebook's 50 TB for inbox search Google uses BigTable in over 60 applications such as Google Earth, Orkut
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NOSQL Characteristics
NOSQL has nothing to do with SQL - (Michael Stonebraker) Characteristics of NOSQL data stores are: Often, file management system, not DBMS Large volumes of data Non-relational and no support for joins Improved performance for large data sets Distributed databases and queries Fault tolerance so that an application will continue even if some connection is lost Horizontally scalable using component nodes Schema-free (so they have a more flexible structure) Eventually consistent (ACID-free) Easy to replicate so as to improve availability Access via API support or other non-SQL interfaces Open-source
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Four New NOSQL Data Store Types

Key Value Distributed Hash Table Key Value 1 Bob 2 Sue 3 Joe 4 Jo Graph Graph Theory Document Semi-structured Column Based Semi-structured

Actually, there are now more DBMS types than there used to be DBMS instances 10-years ago
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NOSQL Assumptions
NOSQL DBMS further utilize one or more of three assumptions: The database will be big enough that it should be scaled across multiple servers. The application should run well if the database is replicated across multiple geographically distributed data centers, even if the connection between them is temporarily lost. The database should run well if the database is replicated across a host server and a bunch of occasionally-connected mobile devices. In addition, NOSQL proposes that a database should have no fixed schema, other than whatever emerges as a byproduct of the application-writing process.

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CAP Theorem
Eric Brewer challenged the ACID properties of RDBMS Atomic - do the whole transaction or nothing at all Consistent obey all integrity and business rules Isolated hide the results of a transaction in progress Durable once committed, the results are persisted He contends that a database cannot ensure all three of the following properties at once, called CAP: Consistency: the client perceives that all of the operations have been performed at once (Do you agree with this definition?) Availability: every operation must end in an intended response Partition tolerance: operations will continue even if individual components are unavailable A database can ensure only any two-of-the-three (PICK TWO) Consequently, NOSQL proposes to replace the ACID properties of an RDBMS with CAP properties NOSQL emphasizes eventual consistency

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Role of Data Architecture in NOSQL

Message Queuing
Enables processes running at different times to communicate across heterogeneous networks and systems that may be temporarily offline Applications send messages to queues and read messages from queues Events Process Process

Guaranteed Delivery

Events

Process

Message Queue

Process

Can be used for: Mission-critical financial services Embedded and hand-held applications Outside sales Workflow
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Sharding for Horizontal Scalability

NOSQL data stores distribute data via sharding Sharding is just another name for horizontal partitioning Horizontal partitioning is a database implementation principle whereby groups of rows are kept on separate nodes A database shard is a horizontal subdivision of a database Each subdivision (partition) forms part of a shard, which may in turn be located on a separate database server or physical location Multiple shards can be placed on different machines Facilitates distribution of data on separate, commodity hardware Is used in most NOSQL data stores Is easier for NOSQL to implement because there is no enforcement of integrity except in the application (Life is good!)
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Sharding and Sharing

Sharding uses the shared nothing model Each server has its own data and processor MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) used this model The functionality of shared nothing is: A controlling node receives the query It then sends the query to the other nodes Each gets its data and sends it to the controlling node The controlling node unifies or aggregates the result sets You can go from this to this just by adding more nodes
Even Distribution Of data This Not
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Advantages of Sharding
The number of rows in each physical space is reduced This reduces index size, improving search performance Database activity can be spread out over multiple machines, greatly improving performance If a shard is based on some real-world segmentation of the data (e.g. European customers vs. American customers), only the relevant shard needs to be queried Two considerations in sharding can improve performance: Even distribution of data to avoid peaks and valleys in instances Collocation of related data (Customer, Order, Order Item all related by Customer ID)

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NOSQL RDBMS Comparison

We are building applications today that have data volume and load requirements that vastly exceed typical OLTP, and even DW, applications of the recent past.

Source: Tobias Ivarsson

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Key Value Databases

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Key-Value (KV) Pair

A set of two linked data items: A key, which is a unique identifier for some item of data, and The value, which is either the data that is identified by the key or a pointer to the location of that data Often used in lookup tables, hash tables and configuration files Only way to query a key value store is by the key The keys could be the names of the objects, alphabetically sorted Data must be grouped into domains, which are sets (Sound familiar? It should. Entities/tables are sets.) Each object is usually replicated in several other stores for high availability

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Examples
Key value data store
Automobile Key 1 Attributes Make: Toyota Model: Highlander Color: Maroon Year: 2004 Make: Toyota Model: Highlander Color: Blue Year: 2005 Transmission: Automatic

A A

Ring partitioning and replication

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Characteristics of Key Value Stores

Key can have dynamic set of attributes The attributes and their values are contained as a blob, usually in the format of a string No relationships are explicitly declared The activities of CRUD (create, read, update, delete) happen to the data via APIs Integrity is maintained in the application code

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Key Value Store Uses

Though KV data store has been around for years, it would probably have a low profile now except for the Web and Cloud Computing Scales to huge volumes of data Handle massive load Simple data model: key-value Ring partitioning and replication

A A
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Amazon Requirements
Amazon had these characteristics: Query: simple read/write ACID: requires high availability but weaker consistency Efficiency: use commodity hardware Other: non-hostile environment with no security issues To solve this they came up with Dynamo

Very simple to build a key value store, and very easy to scale Usually good performance (for certain applications) Schema-less

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Amazons Dynamo
The most famous Key : Value data store Available, scalable and distributed Sample services are best seller lists, shopping carts, customer preferences, session management, sales rank, and product catalog Failure will happen Millions of components At any given moment, always a small but significant number of server and network components are failing Must treat failure handling as the norm Data is partitioned & replicated for availability by hashing the key Consistency facilitated by object versioning Consistency among replicas during updates is maintained by a quorum-like technique and a decentralized replica synchronization Nodes can be added and removed from Dynamo without requiring any manual partitioning or redistribution
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Columnar Databases

A new idea or an age-old implementation?

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Column Oriented Data Stores

There really are two types of column oriented data stores: (1) Wide-column data stores (they resist being called databases) used for web processing, streaming data, cloud computing and documents. These are NOSQL, such as Google BigTable clones. (2) Column-oriented databases are inverted structures (which ARE databases) used for statistical analysis, querying and reporting (such as Vertica and Sybase IQ). These are NOT classified as NOSQL Back in the 1960s random access was supported by fully inverted files Heres a quote from Joe Celko In an inverted file, every column in a table has an index on it. It is called an inverted file structure because columns become files.
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Simple Comparison Column vs. Row

Simple Example of Business Data EmpId Lastname Firstname Salary 1 2 3 Smith Jones Johnson Joe Mary Cathy 40000 50000 44000

A Row-oriented Database: puts rows together 1,Smith,Joe,40000; 2,Jones,Mary,50000; 3,Johnson,Cathy,44000;

A Column-oriented Database puts values of a column together. 1,2,3; Smith,Jones,Johnson; Joe,Mary,Cathy; 40000,50000,44000;

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Row vs. Column Oriented

Col 1 Row 1 Row 2 Row 3 Row 4 Row 5 Row 6 Row 7 Row8 Col2 Col3 Col4 Col5 Col6 Col7 Col8

In most RDBMSs, the entire row is read into a buffer and then sliced down to the attributes

Col 1 Row 1 Row 2 Row 3

Col2

Col3

Col4

Col5

Col6

Col7

Col8

In columnar DBMSs, only the needed columns are read

Row 4 Row 5 Row 6 Row 7 Row 8

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Characteristics of Columnar Databases

The following characteristics describe Columnar DBMSs (Type 2 above) A storage unit (page or file) is assigned to a each column Reading a few columns from every row is very fast Some columnar databases claim they are significantly faster than a row-based database at querying Columns are exhaustively indexed Low cardinality columns may be supported by bitmap indexes Ideal for OLAP, statistical analysis and analytical reporting Unsuitable for OLTP The difference between row-based and columnar databases is only in the storage engine layer Queries still use straight SQL The optimizer passes the re-written query to the storage engine, which writes to / reads from either row-based or columnar based tables

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Columnar Databases
Michael Stonebraker (CTO of Vertica) says: Column databases will take over the warehouse market Many warehouses can't load in the available load window, can't support ad-hoc queries, can't get better performance without a "fork-lift" upgrade Vertica beats all row stores typically by a factor of 50 Columnar database systems are not new, witness Sybase IQ Columnar databases take advantage of exhaustive indexing of columns, bitmapping and data compression to improve performance They used to be considered a niche offering but no more Googles BigTable Data Store keeps data by columns and is great for what it does But is it suitable for data warehousing? Is it suitable for critical financial and medical applications?
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Choosing Bitmapped Indexes

Columnar (and relational) DBMSs often use bitmapped indexes
These are valuable when the data and queries have the following characteristics: Low cardinality - small number of distinct values Low selectivity - # of distinct values / total # of values ANDing or ORing of predicates is often done An index is available Queries with =, <, >, [NOT] EXISTS, UNIQUE, GROUP BY Sometimes an optimizer determines it is cost effective (UDB) In some columns, such as amounts, that may not have low cardinality, consider value banding to reduce the number of distinct values Value banding reduces infinite values to specific ranges that are meaningful to the business Exemplified by income ranges, years of education ranges, net worth ranges, etc.

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Bitmap Example (UDB)

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Wide Column Data Stores

Built by and for Google But used in many BigTable clones

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BigTable (Google)
A BigTable instance contains a column or group of elements that are: Sparse (rows only where there are values; not fixed length) Distributed (horizontally partitioned over many servers) Persistent (stored) Multidimensional (consisting of a multi-part key) Sorted map (in lexigraphic order) A special variation of Key : Value data stores Indexed by row key, column key, and a timestamp Each value in the map is an uninterpreted array of bytes. (row: string, column: string, time:int64) ->string

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Wide-Column Data Store Column Structure *

Uniqueness RowID Column Family Column Qualifier Timestamp Attribute Value

Attribute
Row ID

Column Key Meaning

Key of the instance. A string. Can be name or number. May be composite. Groups data into sets (akin to entities/tables). All data stored in a family is related. Denominates or describes the stored data item (akin to attribute) Complete time of the instance The instance of data stored

Example
9019435035

Column Family Column Qualifier Timestamp Data Value

Company

Gross Revenue Amount 9/2/2011 9:05 AM $2BB

* In my opinion, this structure has a strong resemblance to a denormalized Name-Value Pair

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BigTable Keys and Values

Because these systems tend to be so huge and distributed, this sorted feature is actually very important. The spatial proximity of rows with like keys ensures that when you must scan the table, the items of greatest interest to you are near each other. This is important when choosing a row key and its structure. For example, consider a table whose keys are domain names. It makes the most sense to list them in reverse notation (so "com.jimbojw.www" rather than "www.jimbojw.com") so that rows about a subdomain will be near the parent domain row. Continuing the domain example, the row for the domain "mail.jimbojw.com" would be right next to the row for "www.jimbojw.com" rather than say "mail.xyz.com" which would happen if the keys were regular domain notation. This does not mean that "values" are sorted. There is no automatic indexing of anything other than the keys
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So How Do You Actually Get Data?

In BigTable clones, you get data via Map:Reduce. MapReduce is a framework for processing huge datasets distributed over a large group of computers (nodes) A cluster (if all nodes use the same hardware) or A grid (if the nodes use different hardware). Achieved in two steps: "Map" step: The master node takes the input, partitions it up into smaller sub-problems, and distributes those to worker nodes. The worker node processes that smaller problem, and passes the answer back to its master node. "Reduce" step: The master node takes the answers to all the sub-problems and combines them to get the desired result The advantage of MapReduce is that it allows for distributed processing of the map and reduction operations Doesnt this sound similar to how Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) handles data retrieval? (It should because it is.)
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Document Stores
Have databases, collections, and indexes but not joins (~) Collections contain documents They store unstructured (e.g., text) or semi-structured (e.g., XML) documents basically hierarchical (1 : M) Essentially, they support the embedding of documents and arrays within other documents and arrays Document structures do not have to be predefined, so are schema-free (think about XML) These can be very valuable for storing data in data marts, such as salesperson sales or insurance agent sales for querying

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Graph Databases
Employ nodes (like entities), properties (attributes), and edges (relationships) They say, faster for associative data sets no joins Map more directly to the structure of OO apps Can scale to large data sets without joins Have a less a rigid schema than RDBMS so deal with structural change more easily RDBMSs are faster at set processing

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Should You or Shouldnt You?

You can use Key Value and Wide Column Data Stores as long as your company name contains one of the following words: Amazon Twitter Flickr Google Yahoo Facebook Digg Zynga Best Buy And some others

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Are RDBMSs Doomed?

RDBMSs are well suited to transaction processing, transaction analysis, set processing, flexible querying and have proven integrity enforcement Mission-critical, high performance applications such as brokerage trading, insurance and claims processing, consumer goods transaction processing, banking transactions, pharmaceuticals, will continue to be handled using RDBMSs

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Should You or Shouldnt You?

Pure column data stores (Type 1) such as BigTable and Dynamo clones are not suitable for: The majority of DW/BI applications Traditional mission-critical OLTP applications Or even many traditional web-based applications Pure column data stores (Type 1), Key/Value data stores and other NOSQL data store are pertinent to: Indexing a large number of documents Serving pages on high-traffic websites Delivering streaming media Data as typically occurs in social networking applications Columnar DBMSs (Type 2) with their inverted structures, bitmapped indexes and compression are very applicable to DW/BI environments (but not OLTP) and must be seriously evaluated by every organization investing in BI
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Database Comparison
Performance Key-Value Stores Scalability Of Volume Flexibility Of Structure Complexity Of DB Base Model Main Players

high

high

high

none

variable but is an associative array

AmazonS3 Redis Memcached Voldemort Cassandra HBase Big Table & clones Sybase IQ Vertica ParAccel InfoBright Aster Data CouchDB MongoDB Cassandra Neo4j FlockDB InfiniteGraph The Big Four For DW: Teradata & all DW appliances
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Wide Column Stores Columnar DBMSs

high

high

moderate

low

key and column

high

high

high

high

Inverted file

Document Stores

high

variable (high) variable

high

low

hierarchical

Graph Databases

variable

high

high

graph theory

Relational Databases

variable

variable

low in structure but high in joining

moderate

relational algebra

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Remember the Purpose of Data Modeling

Data modeling is the activity of defining the information needs of an organization by classifying the objects of interest, characterizing those objects, and interrelating them independent of technology and implementation The data model can have many purposes: The classic use is to develop a database Its primary purpose is to express data requirements Right now: NOSQL has little or no use for Data Modeling NOSQL developers generally do not create a logical model If a Logical Data Model is created prior to a NOSQL implementation, the Logical Model and the Physical Model may differ even substantially, especially due to the extreme denormalization and flattening that occurs within NOSQL Nonetheless, the best way to understand the data requirement independent of implementation is to use data modeling
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Levels of Models
Conceptual Model Logical Model Physical Model

Contains major business entities, major attributes and business relationships Used as planning tool at a business level or initial project data model

Contains all the data entities, all attributes and all data relationships A complete model is accurate, detailed and identifies all the required data. A good model offers a number of options for the physical implementation.

Contains table names, columns, indexes, constraints as well as partitioning This is the implementation model, targeting a specific physical DBMS, e.g., DB2, Oracle, etc.

These two levels should be unaffected by NOSQL and columnar databases Data modeling should be done as normal
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The difference in NOSQL et al. is at the physical level

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Data Architecture (DA) and NOSQL

NOSQL understands programming, sharding and building efficient stores, etc., whose characteristics we described earlier Many NOSQL users have a poor understanding of (and struggle with) some important and elementary DA concepts, e.g.: Naming standards (the data is not just in your program) Different types of data such as atomic attributes vs. structured attributes (e.g., NOSQL Columns vs. Supercolumns) Principles of data management: Functional dependency, uniqueness, granularity Non-redundancy and integrity of data Keys: candidate, natural, surrogate The real characteristics of relational databases Its not enough to say Were NOSQL. These are not important. Abandoning them isnt a trade-off. Its a brush-off.
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Trust in Ourselves
As professional data modelers, we must have trust in our science We treat data with respect and should ensure others do also We should also learn to be a bit quicker about it. Data modeling shouldnt take forever. Improved productivity is about tradeoffs. Is it more productive to iterate and iterate through data modeling until we get it right, or is it better to determine, this is good enough, build it and then refactor it? Think twice about putting into a data model something that is extraordinarily difficult to implement (or give guidelines) In implementing, use denormalization sensibly, guided by quantifiable factors Divide deliverables into increments Deliver in shorter increments Provide for early delivery of a prototype Assemble functional teams of motivated, skilled, practical people Timebox the work
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Conclusions
RDBMSs are here to stay because they have proven their value Remember, the paychecks you get, the bank accounts you have, the stocks you buy and sell, the pills you take, the auto insurance you have -- were all enabled by an RDBMS NOSQL data stores are suitable for certain web-oriented applications Most NOSQL DBMSs are unsuitable for the DW and BI querying Assess the value of column-based and other BI DBMSs Believe in the value of logical data modeling, regardless of the physical storage implementation, but just be quicker about it Streamline DBA functions so that refactoring is less painful Use a modified Agile approach for data modeling, especially in a DW and data mart environment Youd have to be crazy not to be Agile But just as crazy to do it in 2-week increments
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Thats My Story and Im Sticking to It

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