Storage Solutions for Big Data Systems: A Qualitative Study and Comparison

TL;DR

This paper analyzes and compares various storage solutions for big data systems, focusing on NoSQL data models, file formats, and emerging decentralized storage technologies, to guide developers in making informed choices.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive feature analysis of four main NoSQL data models, evaluates 80 NoSQL solutions, and compares big data file formats and future storage trends.

Findings

Document-oriented, key-value, graph, and wide-column models have distinct advantages and use cases.

Among 80 NoSQL solutions, specific features align with different application needs.

Decentralized storage and blockchain present future directions with unique challenges.

Abstract

Big data systems development is full of challenges in view of the variety of application areas and domains that this technology promises to serve. Typically, fundamental design decisions involved in big data systems design include choosing appropriate storage and computing infrastructures. In this age of heterogeneous systems that integrate different technologies for optimized solution to a specific real world problem, big data system are not an exception to any such rule. As far as the storage aspect of any big data system is concerned, the primary facet in this regard is a storage infrastructure and NoSQL seems to be the right technology that fulfills its requirements. However, every big data application has variable data characteristics and thus, the corresponding data fits into a different data model. This paper presents feature and use case analysis and comparison of the four main data models namely document oriented, key value, graph and wide column. Moreover, a feature analysis of 80 NoSQL solutions has been provided, elaborating on the criteria and points that a developer must consider while making a possible choice. Typically, big data storage needs to communicate with the execution engine and other processing and visualization technologies to create a comprehensive solution. This brings forth second facet of big data storage, big data file formats, into picture. The second half of the research paper compares the advantages, shortcomings and possible use cases of available big data file formats for Hadoop, which is the foundation for most big data computing technologies. Decentralized storage and blockchain are seen as the next generation of big data storage and its challenges and future prospects have also been discussed.