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Arc with SQL, NoSQL thoughts/questions
3 points by thaddeus 5138 days ago | 4 comments
Recently I have been reading the debates on SQL vs NoSQL and wanted to get your opinions on the fit/no-fit scenarios with Arc.

Currently I store some data records in files, such as the arc forum does, in other projects I am storing data in MySQL.

Here are my thoughts/questions:

1. YC uses files as a data storage system for HN correct? I don't know the stats, but I'm guessing they have 10k to 50k user accounts and get at least 10k hits per hour. How does using the file storage system HN/arc uses stack up against SQL & NoSQL? Do you think HN will need to switch with more growth?

2. I plan to spend a few hours to see if I can get couchDB up and running against arc over the next weekend (if I can finish off setting up nginx). I think couchDB should be easy given the data is passed via js over HTTP. Anyone have feedback on couchDB?

3. A common statement is that NoSQL is not ACID compliant thus data integrity is potentially a problem. I have a hard time adjusting to the idea that data integrity is questionable for anything I code. I don't understand the boundaries for when this potential data loss would happen vs not happen. If I house my data on a single server does this mean it will never happen? Is this only a case when syncing these 'data islands'? What are the odds of data loss? Is this a rare thing or a common thing?



2 points by thaddeus 5137 days ago | link

Looking at the CouchDB overview http://couchdb.apache.org/docs/overview.html. Am I reading this right? CouchDB IS ACID compliant?. Thus all the rants stating NoSQL is not ACID are just incorrect? Or is the statement that it contains ACID properties, but not compliant? Quite confusing.

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1 point by evanrmurphy 5113 days ago | link

2. I plan to spend a few hours to see if I can get couchDB up and running against arc over the next weekend (if I can finish off setting up nginx). I think couchDB should be easy given the data is passed via js over HTTP. Anyone have feedback on couchDB?

Any luck with couchDB, thaddeus?

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1 point by akkartik 5112 days ago | link

"How does using the file storage system HN/arc uses stack up against SQL & NoSQL? Do you think HN will need to switch with more growth?"

Consistency becomes a problem when one server can't serve all the load. I'm curious to see how HN reacts to that need.

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1 point by evanrmurphy 5137 days ago | link

I'm glad you posted this because I'm in limbo about how to keep my data in Arc too. I was definitely excited to learn that there are examples of dynamic websites (HN and Arc Forum) that don't depend on the mainstream database solutions.

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