Modeling and Querying Data in NoSQL Databases

Relational databases are providing storage for several decades now. However for today's interactive web and mobile applications the importance of flexibility and scalability in data model can not be over-stated. The term NoSQL broadly covers all non-relational databases that provide schema-less and scalable model. NoSQL databases which are also termed as Internet-age databases are currently being used by Google, Amazon, Facebook and many other major organizations operating in the era of Web 2.0. Different classes of NoSQL databases namely key-value pair, document, column-oriented and graph databases enable programmers to model the data closer to the format as used in their application. In this paper, data modeling and query syntax of relational and some classes of NoSQL databases have been explained with the help of an case study of a news website like Slashdot.