NoSQL developers club baby seals! With Abandon!

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Herewith I present to you a <sarcasm>spectacular</sarcasm> article in The Database Journal on The Hidden Cost of Scaling with NoSQL which includes brilliant bon-mots like the following (bolding is mine)
Data integrity—In order to achieve high performance despite massive size, non-relational database systems compromise data correctness guarantees. The traditional rules about writing data are loosened, making it far more likely that data can be lost or overwritten. Thus the best applications for a non-relational approach are those that have low-to-medium requirements for data integrity, for example, social media applications. Any application whose data integrity requirements are absolute requires a relational database; NoSQL is a non-starter.

Flexible indexing—Relational databases are very good at letting users query data from multiple perspectives. Joins and indexes are not weaknesses of relational databases, they are strengths. To achieve speed and scale, NoSQL technology relies on assumptions about how data will need to be viewed; it can be extremely difficult or even impossible to achieve an alternate view of data.

Interactive updating of data—Many NoSQL solutions are  designed for bulk updates and quick reads. They are not optimized for applications requiring fine-grain updates and rapid saves.

Concurrency guarantees—When many people are accessing a database it can be important to define and guarantee when and how updates are revealed to concurrent users. NoSQL generally provides no guarantees for the propagation of updates.
 Mind you, they did miss the following very important points too
  • Baby Seals:  NoSQL developers club baby seals with joy and abandon, and make gloves with their flippers
  • Puppies : Using NoSQL makes you want to kick puppies (and kittens!)
  • Nazis : Hitler used a NoSQL database
Seriously, if this isn't sufficient reason for The Database Journal to be shut down, well, I can't think of a better one...




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