MySQL & NoSQL from a PHP Perspective

MySQL & NoSQL from a
PHP perspective

Tim Juravich
@timjuravich
October 4th, 2011 - Tim Juravich

MySQL & NoSQL from a PHP perspective

Who Am I?
• Developer, Startup Junky
• Lead projects in .NET, Ruby, and PHP
• Book on PHP & CouchDB development out early next year from Packt Publishing



What we’ll talk about today
• A high level discussion on NoSQL databases from the PHP developer POV
• We’ll focus on Data Models
• What we won’t be able to talk about:
- How each database scales, stores it’s data.
- CAP Theorem (http://tinyurl.com/nosql-cap)

• We’ll touch on tools for us PHP Developers



Data Models
A data model defines how your application stores data and how it
makes associations.

If you force an incorrect data model into your application...you’re
probably going to have a hard time.



Traditional relational Model (MySQL)
addresses users
id address city state zip user_id id ﬁrst_name last_name
123 Main
1 Seattle WA 98101 1
Street 1 John Doe
120 Pike
Street 2 Jane Doe
321 2nd
Ave

phone numbers
id number primary user_id

1 555-867-5309 1 1
2 555-867-5309 0 1
3 555-867-5309 1 2



What’s wrong with this?
• Nothing really...there are just limitations
- Due to normalization as your data grows so does the complexity of your
database

- As your database grows, writing becomes a bottleneck
- Difficult to scale horizontally
- Sometimes tables are just too limiting



NoSQL databases are born
• History
- Some NoSQL databases have been around forever
- In 2004 & 2005 they explode

• NoSQL really means “Not Only SQL”



NoSQL
• The Good News
- Different tools for different situations
- Flexible (Schema-less)

- Focused on scalability out of the box
- New data models

• The Bad News
- No common standards
- Relatively immature
- New data models



There are no silver bullets!



Size vs. Complexity
Key/value Stores
Column Stores
Document Database
Scale To Size

Graph Database

Typical RDMBS

RDMBS Performance Line

Scale To Complexity


Key Value Stores
• Definition
- Access to a value based on a unique key
- Think of this in terms of a hash-table, or in PHP an associative array.

user_1 user_2
“John Doe” { name: “John Doe”,
email: john@example.com”,
phone: “8675309”
}



Redis
• Strengths
- Incredibly Fast
- Pub/Sub support redis> set im.a.key "im.a.value"
OK
- Simple CLI redis> get im.a.key
"im.a.value"
• Weaknesses
- It can feel limiting with a complex use case

• Use it for
- Rapidly changing data.
- Stocks, Analytics, Real-time collection/communication



Redis & PHP
• There are a variety of Redis & PHP toolkits (http://tinyurl.com/redis-php)
• My favorite is Predis (https://github.com/nrk/predis)

<?php
$redis = new PredisClient();
$redis->set('foo', 'bar');
$value = $redis->get('foo');

• Twitter clone to play with: (http://redis.io/topics/twitter-clone)



Column Stores
• Definition
- Similar to relational database, but it flips it all around. Instead of storing
records, column stores store all of the values for a column together in a

stream. From there, you can use an index to get column values for a particular
record.
- Can handle 4 or 5 dimensions

Keyspace, Column Family, Column Family Row, Column
Keyspace, Column Family, Column Family Row, Super Column, Column



Column Stores
example-db (Keyspace)
users (Column Family)
johndoe (key)
name (column) email (column) phone (column)
John Doe john@example.com 5558675309

janedoe (key)
name (column) email (column)
Jane Doe jane@example.com



Cassandra
• Strengths
- Can handle some serious data
- Writes are much faster than reads

- Hadoop integration

• Weaknesses
- Complex for it’s offering and bloated

• Use it for
- Apps with a lot of writing. Serious applications.



Cassandra & PHP
• Thrift
• There are a few PHP libraries (http://tinyurl.com/cassandra-php)
• My favorite is phpcassa (https://github.com/thobbs/phpcassa)



Cassandra & PHP (phpcassa)
<?php

// Connect to Keyspace
$pool = new ConnectionPool('example-db');

// Create ColumnFamily
$users = new ColumnFamily($pool, 'users');

// Create User
$users->insert('2’, array('name' => 'Jane Doe',
'email' => 'jane@example.com'));

// Get User
$users->get('2');



Document Databases
• Definition
- Documents provide access to structured data, without a schema.
- Buckets of key-value pairs inside of a self contained object.

- Friendliest NoSQL databases for PHP developers



Document Databases
{ id: 'johndoe', { id: 'janedoe',
name: 'John Doe', name: 'Jane Doe',
email : ‘john@example.com’, email : ‘jane@example.com’,
phone : ‘5558675309’ }
addresses : [ “address1” : {
address: '123 main street',
city: 'seattle',
state: 'WA',
zip: ‘98101’ },
“address2” : {
address: '123 main street',
city: 'seattle',
state: 'WA',
zip: ‘98101’ }
]
}



MongoDB
• Strengths
- Familiar Query Language $post->where('id', $this->getID());

- A lot of developer toolkits

• Weaknesses
- Sharding can be a pain

• Use it for
- Things you might do with MySQL, but schemas are getting in the way.



MongoDB & PHP
• A TON of libraries (http://tinyurl.com/mongo-php)
- Doctrine
- Cake

- Code Ignitor
- Symfony
- Zend

- etc.

• My favorite is ActiveMongo (https://github.com/crodas/ActiveMongo)



MongoDB & PHP (Active Mongo)
<?php
ActiveMongo::connect('example-db', 'localhost');

class User extends ActiveMongo
{
public $name;
public $email;
}

$user = new User();
$user->name = 'John Doe';
$user->email = 'john@example.com';

// Insert
$user->save();

// Update
$user->email = 'john@example.org';
$user->save();



CouchDB
• Strengths
- Bi-lateral replication (master-master)
- Slick RESTful JSON API, easy to use

• Weaknesses
- Need some Javascript chops
- Slower writes

• Use it for
- Mobile, CRM, CMS systems, multi-site deployments



CouchDB & PHP
• Not as many as MongoDB (http://tinyurl.com/couch-php)
- Doctrine
- Variety of standalone libraries

• My favorite is Sag (https://github.com/sbisbee/sag)



CouchDB & PHP (Sag)
<?php
class User
{
public $name;
public $email;
}

$user = new User();
$user->name = 'John Doe';
$user->email = 'john@example.com';

$sag = new Sag('127.0.0.1', '5984');
$sag->setDatabase('example-db');
$sag->post($user);



Graph Databases
• Definition
- Instead of tables, rows, columns, it's a flexible graph model that contains
nodes. Nodes have properties and relationships to other nodes.



Graph Databases



Neo4j
• Strengths
- Fully transactional
- Flexible API

• Weaknesses
- A completely different way of thinking
- Complex

• Use it for
- Social relations, road maps, network topologies



Neo4j & PHP
• There are a few of options (http://tinyurl.com/neo4j-php)
- REST API
- Thrift

• It’s pretty complex...



So which DB should you use?
• Don’t rule out relational databases
• Do your homework
• Every project is different
• NoSQL probably should be avoided in these areas
- Transactions, orders, anything where money changes hands
- Business critical data or line of business applications


Thanks!
Feel free to reach out with any questions:
tim.juravich@gmail.com
@timjuravich


MySQL & NoSQL from a PHP Perspective

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