DataWeek 2013 Conference & Festival

It has been observed recently and with increasing frequency that software is eating the world, and further, that APIs are eating software. Software systems are transforming industries as diverse as automotive and healthcare, replacing business processes with services that increase efficiency. 

These software services need to trade information efficiently, often across organizational boundaries. Enter APIs. The transformative impact on software when an organization can combine internal and 3rd party services in a relatively ad hoc way to create new, high value processes is enormous.

There is one problem though - the database architectures underlying all these services have remained stuck in the old LAMP-stack paradigm. Simply slapping an API on an existing database will not do. New approaches to security, distribution, fault tolerance, and owner control of data are needed to realize the full promise held forth by the "API-ification" of the world. NoSQL seemed to hold this promise but it is now apparent, after 7 years, the changes it offers don't go far enough. A new "NoDB" movement is developing - one where databases with specific architectures and optimizations give way to a distributed, stateless, completely hands-off API-driven data architecture.

I will explore the key elements of NoDB, how it capitalizes on the emergence of cloud services, and how companies can start taking advantage of this burgeoning movement today.