SQL vs NoSQL vs BigQuery
The database is an essential part of real-world projects. Even the article you are reading is stored somewhere in the database. As the need for the database has increased over time, different solutions are developed to best fit the software’s needs. The database needs to be secure, accurate, stable, and easier to use for the programmer. Sometimes the strictness is crucial, and sometimes it becomes a hurdle and makes it more complex for the developers. There are different kinds of databases which include SQL, NoSQL, and BigQuery.
What is SQL?
SQL stands for Structured Query Language, which is pronounced as Ess-cue-ell formally but non-formally it is also pronounced as Sequel. It is a Relational Database Management Language that allows you to communicate with the database. Nobody can directly interact with the relational database, you need an interface for performing operations on it, and that interface is the Database Management System (DBMS), in which you write SQL queries, and perform operations e.g. CRUD. The queries are in the form of CREATE, SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE in SQL. The famous DBMS for SQL are MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, etc.
What is NoSQL?
The NoSQL database is the type of database that stores data in formats other than tables. NoSQL uses JSON, BSON, XML, YAML formats. The data stored in NoSQL DB is in the form of documents, key-value pairs, wide-column, and graphs. The popular DBMS for NoSQL databases are MongoDB, Firebase CloudFirestore, CouchDB, Lotus, etc. The example CRUD operations can be createDocument(), find(), remove(), update() in MongoDB.
What is BigQuery?
BigQuery is an enterprise level data warehouse which provides a set of tools for accessing, managing, updating, deleting data, and using machine learning models. It is used by the Data Scientists most of the times for Big Data Analysis. It comes with Google Cloud Platform and uses SQL dialect for performing operations. You can perform linear regression, use materialized views, visualize data using Looker etc.
Difference Between SQL, NoSQL, and BigQuery
SQL and NoSQL are two databases which use relational database management systems and non-relational database management systems respectively. You can store data inside the databases using SQL and NoSQL, you can retrieve data, insert data, update data, delete data, join different tables, create views, arrange data etc. While BigQuery is a tool developed by Google, to deal with very large data sets very quickly. It is a very powerful tool that allows you to analyze the data, eventually creating machine learning models from the data. BigQuery uses the same SQL for managing the data, but also it has other additional tools which increase the power of simple SQL and use it for big data analytics and become very useful for the data scientists.
Bonus Point: SQL or NoSQL?
SQL is the best choice when you have structured data and lot of care is required with each data entry. While NoSQL is the best choice when you have less strictness and you have the user generated data to organize. I will be writing an article for putting my opinion on this question in coming weeks, stay tuned.
