In the strongly typed world we have to predefine data structures expressed with language elements such as structs and classes. However in a dynamic web world there is a greater flexibility, especially with a dynamic language as JavaScript, native browser support for JSON and jQuery libraries. If your data is relational and fixed in the [...]

This post describes how you with a few lines of code can take full advantage of Lucenes powerful analysis functionality for text normalization (crucial for free text searching) but using standard MongoDB features for data storage, indexing and retrieval.

The second presentation from JavaZone 2009 that I want to comment on is “På tide å kaste ut relasjonsdataben?” (Is it time to throw out the relational database?) by Trond Arve Wasskog, which continues the current trend of looking at alternatives to relational databases for persistence.

For myself, I have for some time argued that most people seem to be using relational databases for four separate things: storing objects, querying them, reports, and backups. In my view it is only really good at the reporting part and literally suck at the rest. The object-relational impedance mismatch is a well-known issue, that DDD values are hard to implement using OR mappers also seems to be common knowledge, and that backups are not exactly efficient or easy to make is also an issue.