I've read a few pieces from Vladimir Khorikov and I tend to like the thoughtful way in which he approaches building software. When I saw a link to his SQL v NoSQL databases, I was intrigued to see what his thoughts would be. It's a good read, though with relatively few comments or debates posted at the time I read the article. I was hoping for more and I encourage you to add your thoughts.

The main contentions in the piece are that any of the simpler development techniques that we can use with NoSQL databases don't remove the need for implementing data quality or management features. They just require those features to be implemented by the developer. Specifically the need to deal with multiple schema versions over time, or the requirement we enforce parent child relationships.

Perhaps that's not too bad. After all, if we evolve schemas and the code can easily deal with the changes, that's good. However I think the point about having relational storage when you can, and adding in other stores makes sense. This is what I really believe as well, since we often need to query and combine data, which is something relational stores do very well and very efficiently.

Ultimately I'm sure we will continue to see arguments about relational and NoSQL models being better or worse for particular problems. I actually welcome the arguments  because there are certainly domains of problems where one system works better than the other, and it's good to develop some clarity about those particular problems. However there are also likely many situations where multiple platforms can work, and in those cases, we should use what works well for our team.