Let’s face it the database world as we know it is rapidly changing, non-relational databases are quickly gaining ground and adoption throughout the entire information technology landscape. Remember when we use to egoistically and solely swear by are favorite RDBMS (unfortunately some of us still do!)… Nowadays any serious and passionate database professional must start looking over his or her shoulder. The NoSQL movement is clearly ‘happening’ we just can’t ignore it nor should we dismiss it. Because of the enormous influx of data we are and will be generating in the near future (I think we haven’t seen anything yet) current relational backend implementations as we know them and dearly crafted will either be seriously challenged or become obsolete.

Please don’t get me wrong relational databases are still quite prevalent and are not going anywhere any time soon (I hope so!). It’s about being open minded, knowing what’s out there when it comes to; manageability, performance, persistence and scalability… and let’s not forget about the Cloud.

To help you further explorer NoSQL I recommended the following resources:

NoSQL basics for the relational database savvy
http://www.evidentsoftware.com/nosql-basics-for-the-rdbms-savvy/

Alex Popescu’s – myNoSQL:: A Curated Guide to NoSQL Databases and Polyglot Persistence
http://nosql.mypopescu.com/