Abhinav Hiremath
Independent Researcher
India
Abstract
This study presents a comparative analysis of relational databases (RDBMS) and NoSQL databases within the context of web applications circa 2018. With the rapid evolution of web services and the increasing demand for high scalability, developers faced critical decisions between traditional SQL-based systems (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle) and emerging NoSQL systems (e.g., MongoDB, Apache Cassandra, Redis). We constructed a benchmark dataset representative of typical web application workloads—comprising user profiles, session logs, product catalogs, and transaction records—and evaluated performance under simulated CRUD operations, concurrent access, and schema evolution. Metrics captured include throughput (operations per second), average latency (ms), CPU and memory utilization, and index-update overhead. Statistical analysis via ANOVA and t-tests assessed significant differences. Our simulation research employed Apache JMeter to generate realistic traffic patterns. Results indicate that while RDBMS deliver strong consistency and complex query support, NoSQL systems excel in write throughput and horizontal scalability with eventual consistency trade-offs. The findings guide engineers in selecting appropriate backend databases based on application requirements.
Keywords
Relational vs NoSQL, web applications, performance benchmarking, scalability, 2018 database technologies
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