NoSQL Movement?

[toby]

On Mar 3, 3:54 pm, ccc31807 <carte... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 3, 12:36 pm, Xah Lee <xah... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > recently i wrote a blog article on The NoSQL Movement
> > athttp://xahlee.org/comp/nosql.html
>
> > i'd like to post it somewhere public to solicit opinions, but in the
> > 20 min or so, i couldn't find a proper newsgroup, nor private list
> > that my somewhat anti-NoSQL Movement article is fitting.
>
> I only read the first two paragraphs of your article, so I can't
> respond to it.
>
> I've halfway followed the NoSQL movement. My day job is a database
> manager and I so SQL databases for a living, as well as Perl. I see a
> lot of abuse of relational databases in the Real World, as well as a
> lot of abuse for non-SQL alternatives, e.g., (mis)using Excel for a
> database. The big, enterprise database we have at work is built on IBM
> UniQuery, which is a non-SQL flat file database product, so I've had a
> lot of experience with big non-SQL database work.
>
> I've also developed a marked preference for plain text databases. For
> a lot of applications they are simpler, easier, and better. I've also
> had some experience with XML databases, and find that they are ideal
> for applications with 'ragged' data.
>
> As with anything else, you need to match the tool to the job. Yes, I
> feel that relational database technology has been much used, and much
> abused. However, one of my favorite applications is Postgres, and I
> think it's absolutely unbeatable

It is beatable outside of its sweetspot, like any system. NoSQL is not
so much about "beating" relational databases, as simply a blanket term
for useful non-relational technologies. There's not much point in
reading Xah beyond the heading of his manifesto, as it is no more
relevant to be "anti-NoSQL" as to be "anti-integers" because they
don't store fractions.

>  where you have to store data and

"relational data"

> perform a large number of queries.

Why does the number matter?

>
> Finally, with regard to Structured Query Language itself, I find that
> it's well suited to its purpose. I hand write a lot of SQL statements
> for various purposes, and while like any language you find it
> exceedingly difficult to express concepts that you can think, it
> mostly allows the expression of most of what you want to say.
>
> CC.