Performance aspects of migrating a web application from a relational to a NoSQL database

Abstract

There are many studies which discuss the problem of using various NoSQL databases and compare their efficiency thus confirming their usefulness and performance quality. However, there are very few studies dealing with the problem of replacing data storage for systems currently working. This lack has become a motivating factor to examine how difficult and laborious it is to move an existing, regularly used application, based on the relational environment to a non-relational data structure. The difficulty of carrying out a data migration process, the scope of changes which would have to be done in the existing environment and the efficiency of an application while using new data structures were considered in the presented research. As an example one of on–line games, being a good representative for popular web applications, was chosen.