Key-value database

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A tabular data card proposed for Babbage's Analytical Engine showing a key-value pair, in this instance a number and its base-ten logarithm. BabbageKeyValueCard.tiff
A tabular data card proposed for Babbage's Analytical Engine showing a key–value pair, in this instance a number and its base-ten logarithm.

A key-value database, or key-value store, is a data storage paradigm designed for storing, retrieving, and managing associative arrays, and a data structure more commonly known today as a dictionary or hash table . Dictionaries contain a collection of objects , or records , which in turn have many different fields within them, each containing data. These records are stored and retrieved using a key that uniquely identifies the record, and is used to find the data within the database.

Contents

A table showing different formatted data values associated with different keys KeyValue.PNG
A table showing different formatted data values associated with different keys

Key-value databases work in a very different fashion from the better known relational databases (RDB). RDBs pre-define the data structure in the database as a series of tables containing fields with well defined data types. Exposing the data types to the database program allows it to apply a number of optimizations. In contrast, key-value systems treat the data as a single opaque collection, which may have different fields for every record. This offers considerable flexibility and more closely follows modern concepts like object-oriented programming. Because optional values are not represented by placeholders or input parameters, as in most RDBs, key-value databases often use far less memory to store the same database, which can lead to large performance gains in certain workloads.[ citation needed ]

Performance, a lack of standardization and other issues limited key-value systems to niche uses for many years, but the rapid move to cloud computing after 2010 has led to a renaissance as part of the broader NoSQL movement. Some graph databases are also key-value databases internally, adding the concept of the relationships ( pointers ) between records as a first class data type.

Types and notable examples

Key-value databases can use consistency models ranging from eventual consistency to serializability. Some support ordering of keys. Some maintain data in memory (RAM), while others employ solid-state drives or rotating disks.

Redis was the most popular implementation of a key-value database as of May 2019, according to DB-Engines ranking. [1]

Another example of key-value database is Oracle NoSQL Database. Oracle NoSQL Database provides a key-value paradigm to the application developer. Every entity (record) is a set of key-value pairs. A key has multiple components, specified as an ordered list. The major key identifies the entity and consists of the leading components of the key. The subsequent components are called minor keys. This organization is similar to a directory path specification in a file system (e.g., /Major/minor1/minor2/). The “value” part of the key-value pair is simply an uninterpreted string of bytes of arbitrary length. [2]

The Unix system provides dbm (database manager) which is a 1979 library originally written by Ken Thompson. Also ported to Windows OS platforms, provided through programming languages such as Perl for Win32. The dbm manages associative arrays of arbitrary data by use of a single key (a primary key). Modern implementations include Berkeley DB, sdbm, and GNU dbm. Although dbm precedes the concept of a NoSQL and is rarely mentioned in modern discourse, it is used by many pieces of software.

ProviderLicenseeventually consistentorderedRAMDisk
Aerospike AGPL YesYes
Apache Ignite AL2 YesYes
ArangoDB AL2 YesYes
Berkeley DB AGPL, Proprietary Yes
CDB Public Domain
Clusterpoint Database Server Proprietary
Couchbase Server Proprietary
Dynamo Proprietary Yes
etcd AL2
FoundationDB AL2 Yes
XAP Proprietary Yes
GridGain Systems Proprietary Yes
GT.M [3] AGPL, Proprietary
Hazelcast AL2, ProprietaryYes
Hibari AL2
IBM Informix C-ISAM Proprietary Yes
InfinityDB Proprietary Yes
Keyspace Proprietary
LeanXcale [4] Proprietary
LevelDB BSD3
LMDB OpenLDAP (BSD-like)Yes
memcached BSD3 Yes
MemcacheDB BSD Yes
NoSQLz freeware
Coherence Proprietary Yes
Oracle NoSQL Database AL2, ProprietaryYes
Project Voldemort AL2 Yes
Redis BSD3 Yes
Riak [5] AL2 Yes
RocksDB AL2 or GPL 2
Tarantool BSD Yes
Tokyo Cabinet and Kyoto Cabinet GPL
OpenLink Virtuoso GPLv2, proprietaryYesYes

See also

Related Research Articles

Berkeley DB (BDB) is a software library intended to provide a high-performance embedded database for key/value data. Berkeley DB is written in C with API bindings for C++, C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, Tcl, and many other programming languages. BDB stores arbitrary key/data pairs as byte arrays, and supports multiple data items for a single key. Berkeley DB is not a relational database.

Database organized collection of data

A database is an organized collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. Where databases are more complex they are often developed using formal design and modeling techniques.

A relational database is a digital database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A software system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relational database systems have an option of using the SQL for querying and maintaining the database.

SQL is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS), or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system (RDSMS). It is particularly useful in handling structured data, i.e. data incorporating relations among entities and variables.

Object-relational database database management system

An object-relational database (ORD), or object-relational database management system (ORDBMS), is a database management system (DBMS) similar to a relational database, but with an object-oriented database model: objects, classes and inheritance are directly supported in database schemas and in the query language. In addition, just as with pure relational systems, it supports extension of the data model with custom data types and methods.

The object-relational impedance mismatch is a set of conceptual and technical difficulties that are often encountered when a relational database management system (RDBMS) is being served by an application program written in an object-oriented programming language or style, particularly because objects or class definitions must be mapped to database tables defined by a relational schema.

Entity–attribute–value model (EAV) is a data model to encode, in a space-efficient manner, entities where the number of attributes that can be used to describe them is potentially vast, but the number that will actually apply to a given entity is relatively modest. Such entities correspond to the mathematical notion of a sparse matrix.

In computing, a DBM is a library and file format providing fast, single-keyed access to data. A key-value database from the original Unix, dbm is an early example of a NoSQL system.

A document-oriented database, or document store, is a computer program designed for storing, retrieving and managing document-oriented information, also known as semi-structured data.

A NoSQL database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations used in relational databases. Such databases have existed since the late 1960s, but the name "NoSQL" was only coined in the early 21st century, triggered by the needs of Web 2.0 companies. NoSQL databases are increasingly used in big data and real-time web applications. NoSQL systems are also sometimes called "Not only SQL" to emphasize that they may support SQL-like query languages, or sit alongside SQL databases in polyglot persistent architectures.

InfinityDB is an all-Java embedded database engine and client/server DBMS with an extended java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentNavigableMap interface that is deployed in handheld devices, on servers, on workstations, and in distributed settings. The design is based on a proprietary lockless, concurrent, B-tree architecture that enables client programmers to reach high levels of performance without risk of failures.

LevelDB is an open-source on-disk key-value store written by Google fellows Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat. Inspired by Bigtable, LevelDB is hosted on GitHub under the New BSD License and has been ported to a variety of Unix-based systems, macOS, Windows, and Android.

In database management systems (DBMS), a prepared statement or parameterized statement is a feature used to execute the same or similar database statements repeatedly with high efficiency. Typically used with SQL statements such as queries or updates, the prepared statement takes the form of a template into which certain constant values are substituted during each execution.

PL/SQL is Oracle Corporation's procedural extension for SQL and the Oracle relational database. PL/SQL is available in Oracle Database, Times Ten in-memory database, and IBM DB 2. Oracle Corporation usually extends PL/SQL functionality with each successive release of the Oracle Database.

Object-PL/SQL is a methodology of using the Oracle Corporation's procedural extension language for SQL and the Oracle relational database. The additional features from version 7 and other improvements, lead to one of the large-scale environment implementations of the object-oriented database paradigm.

Oracle NoSQL Database

Oracle NoSQL Database (ONDB) is a NoSQL-type distributed key-value database from Oracle Corporation. It provides transactional semantics for data manipulation, horizontal scalability, and simple administration and monitoring.

Most database management systems are organized around a single data model that determines how data can be organized, stored, and manipulated. In contrast, a multi-model database is designed to support multiple data models against a single, integrated backend. Document, graph, relational, and key-value models are examples of data models that may be supported by a multi-model database.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to MySQL:

An Ordered Key-Value Store (OKVS) is a type of data storage paradigm that can support multi-model database. An OKVS is an ordered mapping of bytes to bytes. It is a more powerful paradigm than Key-Value Store because OKVS allow to build higher level abstractions without the need to do a full scan. An OKVS will keep the key-value pairs sorted by the key lexicographic order. Some OKVS provide a way to customize the sorting algorithm. OKVS systems provides different set of a features and performance trade-offs. Most of them are shipped as a library without network interfaces, in order to be embedded in another process. Most OKVS support ACID guarantees. Some OKVS are distributed databases. Ordered Key-Value Store found their way into many modern database systems including NewSQL database systems like Google Spanner, CockroachDB and TiDB.

References

  1. http://db-engines.com/en/ranking
  2. "Oracle NoSQL Database"
  3. Tweed, Rob; James, George (2010). "A Universal NoSQL Engine, Using a Tried and Tested Technology" (PDF). p. 25. Without exception, the most successful and well-known of the NoSQL databases have been developed from scratch, all within just the last few years. Strangely, it seems that nobody looked around to see whether there were any existing, successfully implemented database technologies that could have provided a sound foundation for meeting Web-scale demands. Had they done so, they might have discovered two products, GT.M and Caché.....*
  4. "YSCB LeanXcale vs Dynamodb". 27 February 2020.
  5. "Riak: An Open Source Scalable Data Store". 28 November 2010. Archived from the original on 31 December 2010. Retrieved 28 November 2010.