data overload

Ever had to change your data model? No? Who on earth do you work for?!

Let’s be honest, the amount of data model changes may drop after a project has gone from production to live, but it’s certainly not unheard of that your client suddenly remember a few very relevant facts about their business model that can have some pretty non-trivial changes to your well thought out data model.

The result? Another few man days work in doing changes to the system, changing the database schema and code to reflect the new information. So is this a good thing or a bad thing? We usually charge them for the hours - so if you take the approach that you love any excuse to charge your clients more then perhaps you like the painfulness of it all. If you’re like me and hate having that conversation that the tiny change that they’ve told you about actually translates into 10 hours’ work instead of just 1 or 2, then you’ll be happy to hear that there is a way to fix this.

Yup - NoSQL.

NoSQL isn’t just a solution for “Big Data”, it’s a solution for any system that requires a bit of flexibility in its data model. Which, let’s be honest, is pretty much all of them.