> But these two camps of databases are slowly converging too, with JSON datatype support in MySQL and PostgreSQL, and pseudo-JOINs and transactions in MongoDB.
That's not enough to justify 'Oh I guess SQL vs NoSQL isn't about relational vs non-relational anymore'. It is 100% about relational vs non-relational. That SQL databases now support JSON is besides the point: nobody is saying to model your data as JSON documents just because SQL databases now support JSON. Similarly I don't believe that MongoDB is saying to model your data in a normalized relational fashion just because it supports 'pseudo joins' (are they even efficient?). The relational model is powerful because it stores data in a query agnostic way, and NoSQL databases are very much not that. If they were, they'd be SQL databases.
* yes, relational database != SQL. But SQL is the only widely used implementation for relation modelling, for better or worse. Show me a NoSQL databases that is built on relational modelling.
That's not enough to justify 'Oh I guess SQL vs NoSQL isn't about relational vs non-relational anymore'. It is 100% about relational vs non-relational. That SQL databases now support JSON is besides the point: nobody is saying to model your data as JSON documents just because SQL databases now support JSON. Similarly I don't believe that MongoDB is saying to model your data in a normalized relational fashion just because it supports 'pseudo joins' (are they even efficient?). The relational model is powerful because it stores data in a query agnostic way, and NoSQL databases are very much not that. If they were, they'd be SQL databases.
* yes, relational database != SQL. But SQL is the only widely used implementation for relation modelling, for better or worse. Show me a NoSQL databases that is built on relational modelling.