NoSQL vs SQL

[blu-Z8efaSeK1ezqlBn2x/YWAg at public.gmane.org (Edward Ned Harvey)]

> From: discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org [mailto:discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org] On Behalf
> Of Mark Woodward
> 
> Any rants/raves/comments either pro/con about NoSQL or SQL?

I completely agree with you, in that (a) that video is the funniest sh*t I
think I've seen all year...  (Also this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg )

And (b) There is missing context in nearly all of the conversations people
have about SQL "not scaling."  To put it in context:  No, google apps can't
use SQL in the backend because SQL just can't scale to the massive numbers
of servers and simultaneous clients serves, and the massive number of points
of entry that satisfy the inbound web requests.  In order to exceed the
workload capacity of a single SQL server, you're talking about several Gb
per second (or at least several hundred Mb).  When you reach that level of
usage, then you start needing a more scalable solution.  You can't possibly
reach these levels if you have a single 100Mb connection to the Internet,
which is much larger than 99% of businesses or home users presently have.
In order to get such a large internet connection, typically companies spend
thousands of dollars per month, if not tens of thousands per month, and a
complete staff of IT people, with a fully managed, high performance, highly
redundant network infrastructure...  

If you are serving users, it will require several hundred simultaneous power
users before you approach the scaling limits of a single SQL server.  More
typically, several thousand simultaneous, because they won't all be "power"
users constantly generating maximum work load.

Or you have a cluster of compute-heavy servers mining data in a data farm...