Chapter 4. Using NoSQL Databases

So far, we've talked of modern, scalable, and robust RESTful web services. We also implemented an application that exposed a sample service that provides mobile contacts data. However, we introduced a huge bottleneck in this implementation using file storage. It prevents our application from being heavily loaded, as file storage lacks multitenant support. In other words, we definitely need to look for a better storage solution, which can be scalable easily, together with our REST-enabled application. These days, the so-called NoSQL databases are used heavily in cloud environments. They have the following advantages over traditional transactional SQL databases:

• They are schemaless, that is, they work with object representations rather than store the object state in one or several tables, depending on their complexity.
• They are extendable, because they store an actual object. Data evolution is supported implicitly, so all you need to do is just...