Accumulo: Why The World Needs Another NoSQL Database

If you’ve been unable to keep up with all the competing NoSQL databases that have hit the market over the last several years, you’re not alone. To name just a few, there’s HBase, Cassandra, MongoDB, Riak, CouchDB, Redis, and Neo4J.

To that list you can add Accumulo, an open source database originally developed at the National Security Agency. You may be wondering why the world needs yet another database to handle large volumes of multi-structured data. The answer is, of course, that no one of these NoSQL databases has yet checked all the feature/functionality boxes that most enterprises require before deploying a new technology.

In the Big Data world, that means the ability to handle the three V’s (volume, variety and velocity) of data, the ability to process multiple types of workloads (analytical vs. transactional), and the ability to maintain ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability) compliance at scale. With each new NoSQL entrant, hope springs eternal that this one will prove the NoSQL messiah.