Study: MongoDB Takes a Bite Out of MySQL
Some especially significant implications for Web developers can be found in a new study by research firm Ovum that measured the sentiment about Big Data vendors in 2012 Twitter posts.
While the study indicated that Big Data retained its popularity last year, data developers will be more interested in conclusions drawn by Ovum concerning the future of Web development.
"The Big Data buzz word even managed to transcend from the enterprise IT world to become a hot topic for business publications and journals in 2012, with MongoDB claiming considerable mindshare among Web developers who traditionally relied on MySQL," Ovum said in a news release.
Ovum principal analyst Tony Baer expounded upon that idea in a blog post. "To some extent, the results were surprising: while Hadoop garners much of the spotlight as a Big Data platform, the vendor 10gen, which develops MongoDB, came in second in mentions to Apache, which hosts the Hadoop project."
Ovum reported that Apache garnered 9.4 percent of Twitter posts, while MongoDB followed at 6.2 percent. "Although MongoDB is not known for storing high volumes of data, it is associated with variety, given its schemaless architecture," Baer said. "The popularity of the 10gen brand is attributable to the fact that MongoDB has become for Web developers the document equivalent of MySQL; it is open source, built in a language (JavaScript) that is highly popular among Web developers, and relatively simple to develop."
However, Baer said, "Ovum believes that the popularity of 10gen is more indicative of the future of Web development rather than Big Data, per se. We view 10gen as becoming the non-transactional database successor to MySQL in the world of Web developers."
I also found it interesting that a study about Big Data used the Big Data technique of culling information from social media to provide insights and conclusions not available through traditional database systems. I also found it interesting that DataSift, the company that conducted the study for Ovum, showed up in the very results it produced, coming in at 10th place in the ranking of Big Data companies mentioned in Twitter posts. All kinds of fascinating stuff here.
What do you think? Is MongoDB encroaching upon MySQL's turf? Please share your thoughts here or drop me a line.
Posted by David Ramel on 01/24/2013