Migration Makes My Skin Crawl: From SQL to NoSQL

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Show Notes

Is database migration as scary as it sounds? Amy Tom talks to Matt Groves, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Couchbase, and Curt Gratz, Co-Owner of CKH Consulting. Amy, Matt, and Curt talk about migrating from a SQL database to a NoSQL database, the challenges developers face when shit hits the fan, and assessing the use case of your database. Curt is a Couchbase user and is well-versed in database migration; he shares how to avoid disaster migration and what he's learned using a NoSQL database. Matt slams down the expert advice on what "NoSQL" encompasses, and how to convert your data structures.

In this episode, Amy, Matt, and Curt discuss:

What considerations are behind the decision between using a SQL database over a NoSQL database? (05:05)
When is NoSQL an inappropriate solution? Matt says it depends on the amount of data and your need for adaptation/personalization (06:42)
What are the challenges facing developers moving from SQL to NoSQL? (08:48)
What the heck is ETL? Curt explains that "ETL-ing data" means transforming your data from one place to another (10:10)
Can we automatically convert the contents of a SQL Server database to a NoSQL database? Matt talks about his automatic translation project that lifts and shifts data into Couchbase (11:30)
What data structures need to be converted when migrating from SQL to NoSQL? (13:12)
If NoSQL is schema-less, do the schemas also migrate over? Long story short, Matt says to think of NoSQL as "schema flexible" instead of "schema-less" (15:57)
What's the deal with stored procedures and how does that impact NoSQL database operations? (17:30)
What about ACID and atomic operations when migrating to NoSQL? (20:46)
What happens when shit hits the fan in the migration process? Can you lose your whole database? Curt talks about disaster migration scenarios and how to solve them (23:07)
What about the process of migrating from one NoSQL database to another? (29:05)
What is Curt and Matt's advice to first-time migrators? Curt says to ask yourself, "why am I migrating?", and Matt says to expect things to go wrong (30:52)