The look into RDBMS versus DHT (Distributed Hash Table)

Nearly all of the modern web-based information systems are using data storage engines of some kind. Some are using RDBMS’es and others Distributed Hash Tables.

However most of the biggest players on large scale markets are using DHT’s for their data storage requirement, i.e.:

Amazon uses Dynamo (http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/10/amazons_dynamo.html).

Facebook uses Cassandra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_(database))

Google is using BigTable (http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html).

Over the next few posts I’m trying to analyse differences between the two and identify cases where each approach Is more suitable.

If you are aware of other real world usages of DHTs please drop a line so I can add them to my analysis.