Michael Stonebraker *is* the horse, and yet has pointed pointed out that RDBMSs aren't always the hammer you're looking for.  Next time you use a B-tree or R-tree (spatial search, anyone?), give him a toast with your favorite beverage.

http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/32212-the-end-of-a-dbms-era-might-be-upon-us/fulltext

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stonebraker


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jay Luker
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 10:38 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] NoSQL - is this a real thing or a flash in the pan?

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> The thing is, the NoSQL stuff is pretty much just a key-value store.
>  There's generally no way to "query" the store, instead you can simply look
> up a document by ID.
>
>
Schemaless != "no way to query".

Key-value stores, like memcache,  are just one end of what most consider the
nosql spectrum. For instance, I can query my CouchDB instances through the
different views I create.

I thought this blog post had an interesting take on NoSQL, although this
guy, Mike Stonebreaker of VoltDB, obviously has a horse in the race.
http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/50678-the-nosql-discussion-has-nothing-to-do-with-sql/fulltext

--jay