Introduction

[[deleted user]]

I am excited about this timely selection. After decades of database model stability, dominated by the relational database model, there is an explosion of alternative models, with many focused on managing huge amounts of unstructured and semi-structured data.

I just finished co-teaching a course on big data, which included Hadoop, HDFS, HBase, Pig, and Hive. This ecosystem is focused on managing terabytes and petabytes efficiently, in scale and performance. There are many other NoSQL (Not Only SQL) alternatives, and this book covers a broad selection.

[Aleksander]

I’m excited about reading this book. I bought it last summer after attending Big Data presentation last summer at UST, but decided to postpone reading it until now. Hopefully, I will have time to work on some exercises behind each chapter as we did while reading Seven Languages in Seven Weeks book.

I’ve heard many good things about Big Data course provided last semester and projects that people worked on during the course.

[Nathan]

For anyone looking to purchase the book, it's 40% off through Wednesday, Jan 9 2013 with coupon code NewYear2013 at http://pragprog.com/book/rwdata/seven...

[Tom]

I have to admit, this book wasn't at the top of my list because the vast majority of the work I do doesn't involve anything resembling traditional databases or "Big Data". However, having read the introduction I realize that some of the NoSQL databases might actually be pretty useful for us, and I'm anxious to see more. Even if they don't turn out to be applicable to my current work, I'm excited to see how much bigger the world of databases has gotten.

[[deleted user]]

A fun "companion" video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyx8iP...