> So let's say (hypothetically, of course) that a colleague tells you he's
> considering a NoSQL database like MongoDB or CouchDB, to store a couple
> tens of millions of "documents", where a document is pretty much an
> article citation, abstract, and the location of full text (not the full
> text itself).  Would your reaction be:

Noo!!! NoSQL is terrible for startup projects ;)
http://labs.mudynamics.com/2010/04/01/why-nosql-is-bad-for-startups/

But seriously, it depends.  You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta
what-have-yous.  I sort of like MongoDB's characterization of the
landscape as tradeoffs between scale & performance on the one hand and
depth of  functionality on the other:
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Philosophy I suspect we'll
continue to see more hybrid systems for some time to come with various
data stores handling the pieces they do best.