Roles, Variety, and Challenges of Database in eCommerce

The role of a database in e-commerce is to digitally store information for retrieving product details and customer information, track transactions, and maintain inventory. Through a database, information can be organized and tracked based on chosen settings. Effective database management can increase the efficiency of a company because it helps firms “analyze and track information about the products, sales, and customers that have been input into the database” (Rojas, 2019).

For example, databases can store products’ characteristics, such as product descriptions, prices, specifications, product reference numbers, promotions, and availability. In addition, databases can store customer information, such as contact details, names, and spending patterns. Such information is analyzed to understand clients better. This type of data helps marketing and find customers’ wants and needs. Finally, maintaining, tracking, and managing transactional information is vital for e-commerce. Systematically tracking every sales order in an organized manner, along with the needed processing details, is key to keeping the business functioning (Rojas, 2019). Regardless of companies’ size, managing efficient and successful e-commerce site is crucial. Databases enable to store, analyze, manage essential information quickly and efficiently.

Different types of databases for e-commerce

One of the first challenges when building an e-commerce website is choosing the type of database. A question that can be asked now is what I can use as a database. At this moment, two types of databases are in the spotlight. Those are the relational database, which is a SQL-based database, and the non-relational database, based on NoSQL. A relational database has a well-defined data relationship where tables are linked to each other. One-to-one (email -> user account), one-to-many (users -> orders), or many-to-many (categories -> products) relationships. Data is stored in tables in a logically organized way with rows and columns. The most common table is a spreadsheet. A schema or blueprint of the database is well-established, and people can determine how the tables are linked to each other. For example, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or Microsoft SQL servers are SQL databases.

In contrast, a non-relational database, such as MongoDB, does not have tables to store the data; instead, the data is stored in a JSON file. JSON is a lightweight format for storing and transporting data. It is used to obtain data quickly. By denormalizing data and removing relationships, the NoSQL format groups the data together, which removes the join step in a normalized format. In most cases, developers prefer a relational database, but with specific requirements like the speed of data acquisition, a non-relational database can be used for e-commerce platforms.

Challenges of database system in e-commerce

Another challenge of a database system in e-commerce is landscape complexity. The database market is changing, and many businesses struggle with assessing and selecting solutions. There are several types of databases, including relational, columnar, object-oriented, and NoSQL, and each has unique characteristics. In addition to landscape complexity, data security is another challenge for firms. Databases are the unseen workhorses of many businesses’ IT infrastructures, storing vital private and public data. Data security has recently received understandable attention due to its importance. In addition to the $4 million average cost of a data breach, businesses also suffer reputational and financial losses. Furthermore, by expanding data volume, companies have difficulty keeping up with the increasing amount of data created and gathered.

According to research, humans has produced less data than we have in the last two years. However, for a typical Fortune 1000 business, a 10% improvement in data accessibility may result in over $65 million more in extra net income. Finally, scalability constraints. Database servers and all applications have scalability and resource utilization restrictions. Proactive companies concerned about transaction processing capacity are aware that the design of databases, operating systems, and even hardware configurations may all impact scalabilities.

NoSQL in e-commerce

As mentioned above, NoSQL (nonrelational) databases are specifically designed and built for particular data models and are widely recognized for their flexible schemas, ease of development, functionality, and performance scale. In this paragraph, Amazon Web Services, Inc. explains the four primary differences between SQL and NoSQL databases. Firstly, relational databases are designed for transactional and highly consistent online transaction processing (OLTP) applications and are well suited for online analytical processing (OLAP).

In contrast, NoSQL databases are designed for many data access patterns, including low-latency applications. Secondly, a relational database normalizes and stores data in

separate tables, and primary and foreign key constraints define relationships. While A schema strictly defines the tables, rows, columns, indexes, relationships between tables, and other database elements in the relational model, NoSQL databases provide a variety of data models such as key-value, document, and graph.

Thirdly, unlike relational databases that provide atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) properties, NoSQL databases often ease the ACID properties of relational databases, making tradeoffs for a more flexible data model that can scale horizontally.

Fourthly, optimizing queries, indexes, and table structures is often necessary to achieve the best performance in a relational database. On the other hand, performance is generally determined by the size of the underlying hardware cluster, network latency, and function of the calling application. Since NoSQL has a more flexible data model that can scale horizontally, it better matches the requirements and needs of the e-commerce market than SQL.

Keywords: Database, Roles, Challenges, E-commerce

References

• Amazon Web Services. (n.d.). What is NoSQL? Overview. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://aws.amazon.com/nosql/
• Rojas, N. (2019, April 2). The Role of the Database in E-Commerce. Trellis. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.trellis.co/blog/the-role-of-the-database- in-e-commerce