Are NoSQL Databases Affected by Schema?

Abstract

During data modelling, NoSQL databases are usually considered schema-less databases. They do not support rigid schema as traditional databases. Instead, offer flexibility and support dynamic schema, which means schema design can be changed at run time to support analytical tasks. NoSQL databases allow storing similar information with multiple schemas, which facilitates data evolution by eliminating restrictions on the schema. It raises the question of whether the schema matters in NoSQL databases, given that explicit schema declaration is not required before data storage. Furthermore, if the schema does matter, what is its potential impact on application performance? This paper examines these questions by taking three types of NoSQL databases: Document store, Column store, and Key-Value store. All possible schema structure alternatives are designed using a sample Entity Relationship (ER) model. Then, a set of common queries are performed on various schema alternatives to analyse the impact of query performance in terms of query response time, speedup factor, read and write Latency, and database size. The results suggest that the scheme alternatives affect the database performance in different NoSQL models.