Re: NoSQL -vs- SQL

Carlos Mennens wrote:
> Just wondering how you guys feel about NoSQL and I just wanted to
> share the following article...
>
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10770
>
> Looking to read your feedback and / or opinions.

"NoSQL" is a brand name and the things it applies to are better called
distributed databases. These things are complementary to ACID databases and
focused on different tasks; one isn't a replacement for the other.

Use an ACID database when you care more about absolute correctness in your data
and will accept greater scalability challenges in exchange when one machine
isn't enough for your workload. Use "NoSQL" when scalability is more important
than correctness and your scalability need is greater than one machine can handle.

Some people would say that "NoSQL" is a contrast with relational databases but I
would say that in fact these things are orthogonal. You can in fact use the
relational model of data over both an ACID database as over a "NoSQL" database,
just as you can use a key-value store over both as well.

Speaking for myself, my Muldis D object-relational database language is designed
to work over both kinds of DBMSs, although it emphasizes the ACID model.

-- Darren Duncan