How NoSQL forced the evolution of a scalable relational database
Everyone seems to want to compare against MongoDB, but when I think NoSQL I think about Google Cloud Datastore and Amazon DynamoDB. Databases which are fully hosted, infinitely scalable, zero-maintenance, transactional, reliable, and - at least with Google&#x27;s offering - scales down to a free tier. They aren&#x27;t perfect or applicable in every situation, but they&#x27;re cheap and easy enough to allow a one- or two-programmer team to achieve massive scale without hiring devops.<p>MemSQL is so expensive you have to call for a quote.<p>If it&#x27;s just &quot;the ability to scale&quot; then sure, SQL is back on the menu. MemSQL, Spanner, CockroachDB are leading the charge and that&#x27;s great! But you have to pay a pretty penny for it (in TCO). There&#x27;s still a lot of value in a cheap fire-and-forget scalable database, and there are not currently any SQL options there.<p>Regarding schemaless: I think this is a divide between people who work in dynamic languages vs people who work in statically typed languages. Schemaless databases are just fine in languages like Java; your classes define the schema with enough rigidity to keep you out of trouble. They wouldn&#x27;t be my choice for Javascript though, that&#x27;s for sure.