Blog: Microsoft Researchers: NoSQL Needs Standardization

Microsoft Researchers: NoSQL Needs Standardization
InfoWorld (04/05/11) Joab Jackson

The growing number of non-relational structured query language (NoSQL) databases needs standardization in order to thrive, according to Microsoft researchers. "Programming, deploying, and managing NoSQL solutions requires specialized and low-level knowledge that does not easily carry over from one vendor's product to another," write Microsoft's researchers Erik Meijer and Gavin Bierman in the April issue of Communications of the ACM. The researchers developed coSQL, a mathematical data model and standardized query language that could be used to combine NoSQL and SQL data models. The researchers say that NoSQL could benefit from the same type of standardization that SQL experienced in the early 1970s. "Just as Codd's discovery of relational algebra as a formal basis for SQL ... propelled a billion-dollar industry around SQL, we believe that our categorical data-model formalization and monadic query language will allow the same economic growth to occur for coSQL key-value stores," the researchers write.

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