SiteWit Corporation: SQL or NoSQL that is the Question

Abstract

This teaching case focuses on a start-up company in the Web analytics and online advertising space, which faces a database scaling challenge. The case covers the rapidly emerging NoSQL database products that can be used to implement very large distributed databases. These are exciting times in the database marketplace, with a flock of new companies offering scalable database systems for the cloud. These products challenge the existing relational database vendors that have come to dominate the market. The case outlines four potential solutions and asks students to make a choice or suggest a different alternative