Data collection, storage, and utilization have become top priorities for companies in all industries.
As digital ecosystems continue to evolve, pivotal areas that are shaping the future landscape, such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cybersecurity, are providing massive amounts of data that can be used to improve services. In ecommerce, many retail companies rely on data analytics to tailor recommendations and create targeted marketing campaigns to boost their revenue and market reach. 
Data has become the new oil of the modern world, with 181 zettabytes of data predicted to be generated in 2025, and businesses are investing heavily in data management systems. One database system that is widely used is the NoSQL database, which has become recognized as being one of the most dependable databases. In this article, we will examine what a NoSQL database is and why they are so dependable.
NoSQL Databases Vs. Relational Database
The most common type of database is the relational database, which organizes structured data into tables and columns. Structured data is information that can be easily mapped into designated fields. These databases are popular because the data is stored in a clear and accessible way, allowing the user to easily see the relationships between different data points. The type of data that can now be collected has evolved, and most data available today is unstructured data, which is information that is not arranged according to a preset data model, such as documents, media files, and mobile and communications data. NoSQL databases, by contrast, allow developers to store huge amounts of unstructured data, giving them a lot of flexibility. There are four main types of NoSQL databases: document, key-value, wide-column, and graph, and each data model is suited to different use cases depending on the application, making them dependable in a wide range of situations.
Benefits of a NoSQL Database
The following benefits make NoSQL databases very dependable.
Flexibility
The flexibility of NoSQL databases makes them one of the most dependable databases across industries. As mentioned above, NoSQL databases are designed to store unstructured data, and the databases can be modified to accommodate new data forms. This allows developers to use them for a range of applications, such as understanding relationships between social media posts (graph database) to IoT and real-time analytics (document database).
Scalability
A guide to NoSQL databases explains how they were developed with the internet and cloud computing as support systems, making it possible to develop a scale-out architecture. Scaling was made possible by spreading out data storage and computing processes over a cluster of computers. Increasing capacity simply required adding more computers to the cluster, which is known as horizontal scaling. The ability to easily scale makes NoSQL databases much more dependable than relational databases, which scale vertically. This involves investing in additional hardware to meet data needs, which can limit their ability to easily adapt to datasets that quickly expand.
Developer Friendly
A key advantage of a NoSQL database is that they are developer friendly. NoSQL databases allow developers to develop and modify specific applications fairly easily by storing data in their native formats. This means that developers aren’t required to always adapt the data for storage purposes. Document databases are also very development-friendly and dependable because the data can be stored in popular programming formats like JSON, BSON, and XML.
Use Cases of a NoSQL Database
To demonstrate how dependable NoSQL databases are, below are 3 popular use cases for NoSQL databases.
Social Media
Social media platforms have become increasingly important for marketing and understanding customer trends. This is why businesses are investing in databases that can handle the different data types and large data loads that come from social media platforms. The flexible schema of NoSQL databases allows one to store, organize, and find relationships from the unstructured data taken from these platforms.
Mobile Applications
Mobile devices are the most popular platform for browsing the internet, making purchases, and communicating over social media. The wide range of data available makes relational databases a lot less dependable compared to a NoSQL database, which is designed to handle unstructured data. NoSQL databases also offer real-time data synchronization features, which allow for immediate updates across multiple devices.
Recommendation Systems
The ability of NoSQL databases to quickly analyze the data using real-time analytics is why they are used to power recommendation systems. By comparing historical data gathered from customers, ecommerce stores can use NoSQL databases to provide recommendations that are tailored to their individual preferences. 
NoSQL databases have become one of the most dependable databases due to their flexibility, scalability, and application in a wide range of use cases. As the need to effectively store and organize data increases every year, more companies will turn to NoSQL databases.
