Fast paced introductions to 7 popular database systems.
Subtitle: A Guide to Modern Databases and the NoSQL Movement.
By Luc Perkins, Eric Raymond and Jim R. Wilson.
The Pragmatic Programmers, 2018.
The pivotal question for this book is stated in the Introduction: “What database or combination of databases best resolves your problem?” So, the books aim is to equip the reader with the essential knowledge to make that decision – or at least to inform the reader of some options.
Databases covered: PostgreSQL, HBase, MongoDB, CouchDB, Neo4J, DynamoDB, Redis.
The coverage of each database system is necessarily fast-paced, but the essence of each system is presented quite well. There is almost no installation instructions at all here, as the emphasis is on understanding concepts in the context of realistic post-installation work.
The book manages to convey a nice overview of the current database system landscape, and in the finishing chapter presents the view that we will witness more of polyglot database project work in the next few years. The reasoning is that these systems have widely differing strengths and weaknesses, and so should be able to complement each other in a lot of ways.
Recommended for experienced developers. For more detailed coverage of these databases, one will have to supplement with other sources.