Welcome and SQL vs NoSQL

Hello!

My name is Owen Lloyd and I’m a sophomore triple majoring in Mathematics, Data Science (with a focus in Statistical Modeling), and Economics. My interests in technology initially stemmed from playing video games and then progressed through my in-class and extracurricular experiences throughout middle school and high school.

While I do not see a future for myself as an IT Professional specifically, I definitely know and want my career to be ingrained in or related to tech in some way. Coming into college I was only a Mathematics major, but after exploring the other programs and opportunities around Penn State, I found that Data Science was a great way to build off of my coursework and interest in Math and apply it to an area that is currently in much demand.

There are many areas where Data Science and Data Analytics, in general, can be applied that are a lot of interest to me. Specifically, I think that the application of data analytics and algorithms based on large historical sets of data to finance and the markets is a super interesting area and a career that could be super fulfilling.

Over time I will be posting videos sharing my progression from a student to a professional in the technological field. In this first video, I will be discussing what SQL and NoSQL are, their difference, and their ideal situations for use.

Here is a quick summary of the information covered in the video:

1. Both SQL and NoSQL serve the same primary purpose of storing data for your project but differ in the way they go about that
2. SQL databases are relational while NoSQL databases are non-relational.
3. SQL databases are designed for vertical scaling, meaning they increase the load on a single server by increasing RAM, CPU, or SSD as the size of the database grows, while NoSQL databases are horizontally scalable, meaning they increase the number of servers in the NoSQL database.
4. SQL has a standard schema definition (a blueprint of how the data is organized) while NoSQL has no standard schema definition which makes it best suited for big data as flexibility is very important.

And here are the links to the articles shown in the video:

1. https://www.mongodb.com/nosql-explained/nosql-vs-sql
2. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/sql-vs-nosql-which-one-is-better-to-use/
3. https://www.xplenty.com/blog/the-sql-vs-nosql-difference/#:~:text=SQL%20databases%20are%20relational%2C%20NoSQL,dynamic%20schemas%20for%20unstructured%20data.&text=SQL%20databases%20are%20table%20based,graph%20or%20wide%2Dcolumn%20stores.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and watch my introductory video on SQL vs. NoSQL. I will be making more of these blog/video combos throughout the fall semester and possibly beyond then.

Thanks again for reading!
Owen