Big Data For Dummies

Chapter 7

Operational Databases

In This Chapter

Taking a look at the relational database

Examining nonrelational and key-value pair databases

Exploring document and columnar databases

Getting to know graph and spatial databases

Pursuing the polyglot

Big data is becoming an important element in the way organizations are leveraging high-volume data at the right speed to solve specific data problems. However, big data does not live in isolation. To be effective, companies often need to be able to combine the results of big data analysis with the data that exists within the business. In other words, you can’t think about big data in isolation from operational data sources. There are a variety of important operational data services. In this chapter, we provide an explanation of what these sources are so that you can understand how the data inevitably will be used in conjunction with big data solutions.

One of the most important services provided by operational databases (also called ...