Where Do We Go from Here?

Scaling problems associated with modern applications now fall largely in the realm of data management. We have reached a point in the evolution of applications where the choice of framework, operating system, programming language, and so on matters less than ever. Hardware and storage get cheaper by the day and tools like virtual machines, the cloud, and containers make interoperation between servers and runtime operations ever more seamless, to the point where once-epochal decisions about languages and platforms are often driven as much by preference as by necessity.

But for reasons we‘ve laid out throughout this book, database choices are different. Someday those choices may revolve around whims and preferences, but we won‘t get there for quite some time. If you want to scale your application in this day and age, you should think long and hard about which database, or databases, you choose, as that aspect of your application could end up being more of a bottleneck and break point than the languages, platforms, operating systems, and other tools you use. One of the core purposes of this book was to help you make this choice wisely.

Although the book has come to a close, we trust your interest in polyglot persistence and the world of non-relational databases is wide open. The next steps from here are to pursue in detail the databases that piqued your interest or continue learning about other NoSQL options, such as Cassandra, ArangoDB, Titan, or Google Cloud Datastore.

It’s time to get your hands dirty.