Ask HN : Use MySQL as a non-relational database

21 points·dan_sim··9 comments

I'm searching for anything that could help me using MySQL (or SqlLite) as if it was a non-relational database (like couchDB) in ruby. Is such a thing exists?

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http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql

This is a really good article that can get you started with this idea. You would have to develop your own solution but a lot of good ideas here.

Thanks! I was searching for that post and I didn't remember where it was.

very interesting article, thanks

It's in Python rather than Ruby, but Infogami's ThingDB and its successor Infobase are distributed key-value stores built on top of PostgreSQL:

http://pharos.infogami.com/tdb

http://openlibrary.org/about/tech

http://infogami.org/src/

Are you looking for something like Berkeley DB? It's essentially a persistent key/value store. You don't have sql, but you do have ACID compliant features.

Summery of a programmer's usage here: http://simonwillison.net/2003/Nov/26/discoveringBerkeleyDB/

Some Docs here: http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net/reftoc.html

Python not ruby, but the language on top is a minimal piece in their setup: http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql

If you are talking about using MySQL like memcache (so persistence isn't an issue) check out MYISAM MEMORY tables - http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/memory-storage-engine...

Super fast but if the server dies so does all your data...

Shouldn't you rather use a real non-relational database if that's what you need?

I knew someone would say that but I'm not ready to install a RDBMS on a production environment yet. Besides that, I'm also just curious if someone did it.

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