Relational databases versus HBase: An experimental evaluation

Abstract

Relational database management systems (RDBMS) have been imposed for more than three decades as a facto standard for data storage, management, and analysis. They have a good reputation by supporting ACID properties (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) and by adopting the SQL language which has become a standardized language. However, despite their power, RDBMS have failed to meet the modern application's requirements. That's why the need arises for new database management systems that support the manipulation of large amounts of data. NoSQL database systems allow a flexible schema, whereas RDBMSs require a strictly defined schema. They support horizontal scalability and prioritize data availability over consistency (BASE properties) and have performance that remains good with scalability. In this paper, we present an experimental comparison between a relational database (MySQL) and a NoSQL database (HBase) in terms of runtime and latency in different scenarios using the YCSB Framework.