piece of data at a time, a concept known as record- locking. But with today’s large-scale databases (think Google and Amazon), this is just not possible. A NoSQL database can work with data in a looser way, allowing for a more unstructured environment, communicating changes to the data over time to all the servers that are part of the database. As stated earlier, the relational database model does not scale well. The term scale here refers to a database getting larger and larger, being distributed on a larger number of computers connected via a network. Some companies are looking to provide large-scale database solutions by moving away from the relational model to other, more flexible models. For example, Google now offers the App Engine Datastore, which is based on NoSQL. Developers can use the App Engine Datastore to develop applications that access data from anywhere in the world. Amazon.com offers several database services for enterprise use, including Amazon RDS, which is a relational database service, and Amazon DynamoDB, a NoSQL enterprise solution.
Sidebar: What Is Metadata?
The term metadata can be understood as “data about data.” Examples of metadata of database are:
• number of records • data type of field • size of field
• description of field • default value of field • rules of use. Information Systems for Business and Beyond (2019) pg. 79
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