Future Development of SQL, NoSQL and NewSQL Databases

Dear Colleagues,

“Database Management System” is a comprehensive terminology that refers to a software that interacts with end users and applications and lets the user store, alter, recover, and analyse the stored data. There are three classes of database systems, namely, SQL-Relational Database Systems (RDBMSs), NoSQL Databases, and NewSQL Databases.

Until recently, SQL-Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMSs) were the foundation for managing data. Underlying the RDBMS is the relational model for structuring data and SQL query language for data manipulation and retrieval. The declarative nature of SQL made RDBMS popular, as it enabled users with no technical background to query and manipulate data.

In the past couple of years there has been a remarkable rise in the amount of data that is being generated. “Big data” is a term used to describe this enormous quantity of data, which can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. Processing such vast amounts of data requires speed, flexible schemas, and distributed databases. To handle this massive amount of data effectively, two new classes of databases were born: non-relational and more recently new relational—popularly known as NoSQL and NewSQL databases, respectively.

NoSQL databases are also known as Not-only-SQL databases, and belong to the non-relational model. These databases are schema-free and have a flexible schema design that can handle a variety of data. They are scalable and provide high availability, thereby being more favourable to store big data and Internet of Things (IoT) data.

On the other hand, the NewSQL or the modern relational model is designed in such a way that it retains the relational aspect of the traditional RDBMS while simultaneously incorporating solutions provided by NoSQL databases. They are claimed to be the most promising database management systems in addition to being far more adept at handling data than other databases for the ever-increasing IoT and big data.

This Special Issue intends to promote the dissemination of the latest developments, methodologies, solutions, and case studies of SQL, NoSQL, and NewSQL databases. Its objective is to publish high‐quality articles presenting conceptual, theoretical, and experimental contributions, discussing and treating challenges, state-of-the-art, and solutions to a set of currently unresolved key questions including, but not limited to: architecture, infrastructure, performance analysis, optimization, applications, interoperability, scalability, security, etc. Only technical papers describing previously unpublished, original, state‐of‐the‐art research that are not currently under review by a conference or journal will be considered. Possible topics of interest of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

• Advances in SQL databases;
• Advances in NoSQL databases (e.g., key/value, columnar, document, graph);
• Advances in NewSQL databases;
• Advances in in-memory data management;
• Efficient and effective processing and management of big data;
• Map/Reduce framework and its exploitation;
• Security mechanisms for NoSQL management;
• Availability, reliability, and scalability;
• Performance characterization, evaluation, and optimization;
• Multiple source data processing and integration with MapReduce;
• Storage and computation management of big data;
• Data management for analytics;
• Data warehousing, OLAP, SQL analytics;
• Query processing and optimization;
• Database monitoring and tuning;
• Database security, privacy, access control;
• Database usability;
• WWW and databases;
• Mobile databases;
• Databases for emerging hardware;
• Open source databases.

Prof. Dr. Jorge Bernardino
Guest Editor

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• RDBMS 
• NoSQL 
• NewSQL 
• database architecture 
• database performance 
• database security 
• large-scale databases