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I am about to build an application which does analytics on student results. Ghe data that needs to be stored looks like this:

Course: name
Semester: 1st,2nd etc
Student: name
Subject1: marks
Subject2: marks
Subject3: marks
Subject4: marks
Subject5: marks
Subject6: marks

GRAND TOTAL: marks

Subjects would vary according to the semester & course. Ghe main requirements are:

  1. Database should allow creation of various reports like exam-wise report, student-wise report, consolidated report, subject report etc.
  2. It should have library for ruby as that's the language I have decided on.

So, should I choose relational or NoSQL database for this kind of application. If NoSQL, then which one?

Question what is the best suited database for this use-case?

Jonathan Hall
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CuriousMind
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1 Answers1

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Considering only the requirements you mentioned, I'd go with the simplest approach and use a RDBMS. I can't see any advantage in using NoSQL here because:

  1. The data is well structured
  2. It doesn't sound like a distributed system
  3. NoSQL is not a magic solution for reporting. In fact it's not a solution for reporting :)
  4. Considering your domain, performance should not be an issue
  5. Considering your domain, you do care about ACID

However RDBMS has everything to get up and running:

  1. Transactions
  2. Low learning curve
  3. Easy to implement basic reporting

So if the purpose is to get things done fast - I'd do it with RDBMS. If it's just for playing with databases - try implementing it with both technologies and then compare :)

Igor S.
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