Table of Contents for

Seven Databases in Seven Weeks, 2nd Edition

What’s in This Book

This book is aimed at experienced application developers, data engineers, tech enthusiasts, and others who are seeking a well-rounded understanding of the modern database landscape. Prior database experience is not strictly required, but it helps.

After a brief introduction, this book tackles a series of seven databases chapter by chapter. The databases were chosen to span five different database genres or styles, which are discussed in Chapter 1, ​Introduction​. In order, the databases covered are PostgreSQL, Apache HBase, MongoDB, Apache CouchDB, Neo4J, DynamoDB, and Redis.

Each chapter is designed to be taken as a long weekend’s worth of work, split up into three days. Each day ends with exercises that expand on the topics and concepts just introduced, and each chapter culminates in a wrap-up discussion that summarizes the good and bad points about the database. You may choose to move a little faster or slower, but it’s important to grasp each day’s concepts before continuing. We’ve tried to craft examples that explore each database’s distinguishing features. To really understand what these databases have to offer, you have to spend some time using them, and that means rolling up your sleeves and doing some work.

Although you may be tempted to skip chapters, we designed this book to be read linearly. Some concepts, such as mapreduce, are introduced in depth in earlier chapters and then skimmed over in later ones. The goal of this book is to attain a solid understanding of the modern database field, so we recommend you read them all.