--- title: "Have the tables turned on NoSQL?" publication: "DB Weekly" issue: 337 published_at: "2021-01-15" canonical_url: "https://dbweekly.com/issues/337" --- Plus migrating from a flat file database, Postgres hash indexes, and a predictive AI layer for existing databases. | #337 — January 15, 2021 [Read on the Web](https://dbweekly.com/issues/337) Database Weekly [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/dxtzth7bfiqcmt40gsot.jpg)](https://unstructed.tech/2021/01/11/your-legacy-database-is-outgrowing-itself/) [When Your Legacy Database Is Outgrowing Itself](https://unstructed.tech/2021/01/11/your-legacy-database-is-outgrowing-itself/) — The tale of scaling a database to support [chess.com](https://www.chess.com/), an extremely popular site where you can play chess (surprisingly!) A lot of scaling issues popped up during lockdown as everyone rushed online to play games and here’s how they dealt with it using their homebrew MySQL clustering approach. Aleksandar Ikonic [Have The Tables Turned on NoSQL?](https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/14/have-the-tables-turned-on-nosql/) — After you get over the clever headline, this is a reflection on the growth of NoSQL solutions in the prior decade, their weaknesses, and the resurgence of SQL as a ‘gold standard.’ John Biggs and Ryan Donovan (Stack Overflow) [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/3814d06f.png)](http://www2.fauna.com/serverless?utm_source=DBWeekly&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=CooperPress_Newsletters_2021) [A Global Serverless Database for All Your Applications](http://www2.fauna.com/serverless?utm_source=DBWeekly&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_campaign=CooperPress_Newsletters_2021) — Modernize your OLTP database to a 100% operations-free approach without compromising on the capabilities that you need for building industrial grade enterprise applications. Fauna is the “Data API” for modern applications. Fauna sponsor [Cockroach Labs Raises $160M on $2B Valuation](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/explosive-growth-2021/) — A _big_ raise for the creators of CockroachDB, a scalable, widely-distributed ‘cloud native’ transactional SQL database system. Doubling down on product development is their intention with the cash and I wouldn’t be surprised to see an IPO in the medium term future. Cockroach Labs [An Unlikely Database Migration](https://tailscale.com/blog/an-unlikely-database-migration/) — We’ve all simply used text files (whether CSV or a lump of JSON) as adhoc databases, and so was the case at Tailscale, a networking company. Here’s how they migrated from a single JSON blob ‘database’ to etcd to help their control plane scale into the future. Brad Fitzpatrick and David Crawshaw [License Changes Coming to Elasticsearch and Kibana](https://www.elastic.co/blog/licensing-change) — Echoing [similar moves](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/16/mongodb-switches-up-its-open-source-license/) by MongoDB a couple of years ago, the creators of Elasticsearch are keen to ensure anyone offering Elasticsearch _as a service_ contribute code back or license it commercially. [This poses risks for Elasticsearch users,](https://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2021/01/14/elasticsearch-and-kibana-are-now-business-risks) however, says VM Brasseur. Shay Banon (Elastic) [The Always-On Time-Series Database: Keeping Up Where There's No Way to Catch Up](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3442634) — A sort of written round-table discussion where three data architects/scientists talked about time series databases that can handle huge amounts of overlapping data without conflicts. This is a good example of thinking through a problem and would probably have made a good podcast session.. ACM [Cross-Account Replication with Amazon DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/cross-account-replication-with-amazon-dynamodb/) — Demonstration of a cost-effective way to migrate and sync DynamoDB tables across AWS accounts while having no impact on the source table performance and availability. Ahmed Saef Zamzam and Dragos Pisaro [Re-Introducing Hash Indexes in Postgres](https://hakibenita.com/postgresql-hash-index) — Billed as the ‘ugly duckling of index types’, this is a look at an uncommonly used type of index whose use was discouraged in the past but whose performance can sometimes beat the trusty B-tree as we see here. Haki Benita [Simulating Amazon DynamoDB Unique Constraints using Transactions](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/simulating-amazon-dynamodb-unique-constraints-using-transactions/) — DynamoDB has no mechanism for ensuring the uniqueness of attributes but here’s a pattern for managing this from the application side. Chad Tindel and Brett Hensley (AWS) [Four SQL Window Functions and Examples for a Data Scientist Interview in 2021](https://sqlpad.io/tutorial/4-essential-sql-window-functions-and-examples-for-a-data-scientist-interview-in-2021) — This is billed as being suitable for job interview practice, but reviewing window functions is never a bad idea as they can come in useful when you least expect it. Leon Wei [Free eBook: Efficient Search in Rails with Postgres](https://pganalyze.com/ebooks/efficient-search-in-rails-with-postgres?utm_source=DBWeeklySecondary01152021) — Speed up a search query from seconds to milliseconds and learn about exact matches, trigrams, ILIKE, and full-text search. pganalyze sponsor [How MongoDB’s Drivers Team Makes It Easier for Developers to Innovate](https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/meet-kaitlin-mahar-how-mongodbs-drivers-team-makes-easier-developers-innovate) — Kaitlin Mahar, Lead Engineer at MongoDB, shares more about their Drivers team and how they support developers within the open source community. MongoDB, Inc. [Cloud Data Warehouses and Cloud Data Lakes: There’s No Need to Choose](https://www.datanami.com/2021/01/13/cloud-data-warehouses-and-cloud-data-lakes-theres-no-need-to-choose/) Venkat Chandra [How To Install and Use SQLite on Ubuntu 20.04](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-sqlite-on-ubuntu-20-04) Gareth Dwyer 🔨 Code and Tools [MindsDB: A Predictive AI Layer for Existing Databases](https://github.com/mindsdb/mindsdb) — Some of the code behind [a company](https://mindsdb.com/) aiming to bring ML-based predictive models to existing databases using regular SQL. MindsDB Inc [Irmin: A Distributed Database Built on Git's Principles](https://github.com/mirage/irmin) — An OCaml library for building mergeable, branchable distributed data stores. We first mentioned this several months ago but it’s seen some releases since. MirageOS [Loading Complex CSV Files into BigQuery using Google Sheets](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/loading-complex-csv-files-bigquery-using-google-sheets) Google Cloud Blog A **[Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/)** publication. [Change your email address](https://dbweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or[Stop getting this newsletter](https://dbweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*) © Cooper Press Ltd · Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom