The Genres

Like music, databases can be broadly classified into one or more styles. An individual song may share all of the same notes with other songs, but some are more appropriate for certain uses. Not many people blast Bach’s Mass in B Minor out an open convertible speeding down the 405. Similarly, some databases are better for some situations over others. The question you must always ask yourself is not “Can I use this database to store and refine this data?” but rather, “Should I?”

In this section, we’re going to explore five main database genres. We’ll also take a look at the databases we’re going to focus on for each genre.

It’s important to remember that most of the data problems you’ll face could be solved by most or all of the ...

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