NoSQL families

Key-value, document, wide-column and graph stores each drop some relational features to gain scale or flexibility. Pick by access pattern: how will the data be read and written, at what volume?

Where it shows up in real systems

  • Key-value store

    Data is spread across partitions by the hash of its key, so throughput scales almost without limit as long as keys are well distributed. A single very popular key hits one partition's limit and gets throttled. On-demand mode follows traffic but absorbs sudden jumps above twice the previous peak with throttling.

    In production: Amazon DynamoDB, Azure Cosmos DB, Google Bigtable, Riak, FoundationDB

  • Document database

    A replica set elects a new primary when the current one fails. With write concern majority, an acknowledged write survives that failover; with w:1, recent writes can be rolled back. Reading from secondaries scales reads but returns slightly stale data.

    In production: MongoDB Atlas, Amazon DocumentDB, Couchbase, Firestore

See it break, then fix it

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