Seven Databases in Seven Weeks, a Book Review of NoSQL Databases

While this book is not a how to tutorial or installation guide, it does give a deep dive into the different databases covered

By: Greg Schulz

Nov. 28, 2012 08:00 AM

Seven Databases in Seven Weeks (A Guide to Modern Databases and the NoSQL Movement) is a book written Eric Redmond (@coderoshi) and Jim Wilson (@hexlib), part of The Pragmatic Programmers (@pragprog) series that takes a look at several non SQL based database systems.

Coverage includes PostgreSQL, Riak, Apache HBase, MongoDB, Apache CouchDB, Neo4J and Redis with plenty of code and architecture examples. Also covered include relational vs. key value, columnar and document based systems among others.

The details: Seven Databases in Seven Weeks
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf (May 18, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1934356921
ISBN-13: 978-1934356920
Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.8 x 9 inches

Buzzwords (or keywords) include availability, consistency, performance and related themes. Others include MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Neo4J, JSON, CouchDB, Hadoop, HBase, Amazon Dynamo, Map Reduce, Riak (Basho) and Postgres along with data models including relational, key value, columnar, document and graph along with big data, little data, cloud and object storage.

While this book is not a how to tutorial or installation guide, it does give a deep dive into the different databases covered. The benefit is gaining an understanding of what the different databases are good for, strengths, weakness, where and when to use or choose them for various needs.

A look inside my copy of Seven Databases in Seven Days

Who should this book includes applications developers, programmers, Cloud, big data and IT/ICT architects, planners and designers along with database, server, virtualization and storage professionals. What I like about the book is that it is a great intro and overview along with sufficient depth to understand what these different solutions can and cannot do, when, where and why to use these tools for different situations in a quick read format and plenty of detail.

Would I recommend buying it: Yes, I bought a copy myself on Amazon.com, get your copy by clicking here.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz - Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

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About Greg Schulz
Greg Schulz is founder of the Server and StorageIO (StorageIO) Group, an IT industry analyst and consultancy firm. Greg has worked with various server operating systems along with storage and networking software tools, hardware and services. Greg has worked as a programmer, systems administrator, disaster recovery consultant, and storage and capacity planner for various IT organizations. He has worked for various vendors before joining an industry analyst firm and later forming StorageIO.

In addition to his analyst and consulting research duties, Schulz has published over a thousand articles, tips, reports and white papers and is a sought after popular speaker at events around the world. Greg is also author of the books Resilient Storage Network (Elsevier) and The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC). His blog is at www.storageioblog.com and he can also be found on twitter @storageio.