Backlash starts against 'sexy' databases | Reg Developer

Backlash starts against 'sexy' databases | Reg Developer: "Holland, who said he understands the shortcomings of a relational database but also knows its strengths, concluded: 'The bottom line is don't tell me RDMBS can't scale if you can't write a decent query or design a normalized database schema.'

Elsewhere, evangelists have been taken to task for hype, by 'fawning' and posting comments 'verging on satire' in their support of the new wave - specifically, SimpleDB. Todd Hoff praised SimpleDB for eliminating much of the complexity of traditional RDBMS systems by dispensing with tiresome technicalities such as data schema and normalization. He said such things are unnecessary for many web applications.

Defending RDBMS, computer science student Ryan Park listed 10 reasons for avoiding SimpleDB, CouchDB and Google DataStore. Among them: data integrity is not guaranteed, complicated reports and ad hoc queries will require a lot more coding, and relational databases are scalable even with massive data sets.

'Mr. Hoff's supposed advantages are actually serious disadvantages to the paradigm. Before designing your architecture around a database engine like SimpleDB, it's important to consider the reasons not to do so,' Park wrote."