Document data base – why is it preferred for IOT applications
IOT generates very large volume of data in real time from varied sources. The structure of data cannot be specified in most cases. This eliminates the use of conventional RDBMS. And the document database and similar ones are the only solution.
Internet of Things is a collection of heterogeneous systems with hundreds of thousands of sensors, actuators, data inputs, gateways, human interfacing systems etc. The system is not static and many systems get added and deleted in real time. Further the operational parameters also change in time.
In addition, the number and types of systems that may be integrated are not known in advance and the amount of data generated by these systems is humongous. The demand of the IOT system to scale is very large and critical. All these add to the complexity of the IOT system.
RDBMS is a very structured data base management system where all the parameters need to be known in advance to create and operationalize the system. Further, for integration, structure of incoming data and its compatibility to the RDBMS needs to be known.
In an IOT system, previous knowledge about data structure of the system to be integrated is a remote possibility. Further the structure of data extracted from videos, audio or such systems cannot be predictable. To make matters worse, the quantum of data may be in the order of millions and the make I/O operation for an RDBMS environment impossible.
Document data base is the most suitable solution in solving most issues. They are highly scalable and have flexible data structures. They can handle very large data sets and have the flexibility to handle varying demands. Other types that may be used are key-value database, or graph database or Time series databases based on requirement of the application along with document database.