3 blog kings of data

I get my information on databases, datastores, big-data, etc… primarily from 3 bloggers: Todd Hoff of High Scalability, Alex Popescu of myNOSQL, and Curt Monash of DBMS2. Each of them specialises in different areas and each has their own style and purpose, taken as a whole, they cover a lot of ground w/o a lot of dilution.

In 2-10 years you will look back at Todd Hoff’s blog High Scalability and it will contain everything that is happening right now. He has a keen insight into which technologies are fads and which technologies may lead to big changes, and he is not at all full of shit, which is next to impossible given this task. He dabbles in reporting on truly innovative technologies and he actually understands them. His style is strictly-facts and he rarely bad mouths people/ideas/stuff. His blog is the remedy for the hardened cynic that thinks we are making no important advances. His weekly “Stuff the Internet says on Scalability”, is ALWAYS good for at least 3 links to stuff I find interesting (which is 3 links higher than every other summarized email I get).

Alex Popescu is the go to guy for NOSQL. Alex Popescu’s blog myNSOSQL covers the ENTIRE NOSQL gambit (GraphDB’s, DocumentStores, KeyValueStores, Hadoop/Mapreduce, etc…). He quickly sees thru most of the bullshit in the NOSQL world, and clearly explains the differences in a movement that is full of confusion. He likes to tear people’s points apart, his points are valid and he also blasts NOSQL ideas/approaches/etc… when they have it coming. His tweet stream (@al3xandru) is a raging river of NOSQL information, it will keep you on top of the NOSQL game (once you learn how to wade thru it), plug into it, and you can be up on most of NOSQL in probably a month.

Curt Monash knows the RDBMS market, especially the analytics market, better than you know anything 🙂 He has been in the game forever, and he earns money w/ his blog DBMS2, so it cant be called 100% objective, but he has the type of abrasive personality that is only comfortable telling mostly the truth, so IMO the info in his blog is basically objective. RDBMS technologies are relatively very mature, advanced, and widespread, so having a good summary of what is going on in that market is a MUST for any fan of data. Monash is a definitions junky, which can be boring/tiring to read, but it represents a mature approach and does help make sense of such a large, complicated, and polluted-by-enterprise-generated-bullshit market. Having a guy w/ such experience who is still very up to date, reporting on one of the oldest (yet most active) fields in computing is of great value to all of us.

In conclusion:

Real smart people are reading these 3 blogs, learning what other real smart people are doing, and forming new even smarter ideas. For this to happen a medium of information exchange that does not waste smart peoples’ time, doesn’t insult smart peoples’ intelligence w/ obvious marketing ploys, and is written in a style that sparks their imagination, is required. So go read their blogs, you will learn stuff 🙂