What a terrible article. Leaving aside the grammar and spelling mistakes, the quote from Stonebraker is taken completely out of context (in the interview, he is

What a terrible article. Leaving aside the grammar and spelling mistakes, the quote from Stonebraker is taken completely out of context (in the interview, he is talking about the architecture of systems for doing algorithmic trading, not relational databases in general: latency is indeed critical for algorithmic trading, but far less so for typical database applications and web apps). Then there are content-free statements like: "This means you should be paying attention to your code quality, optimization ... There are built in limitations as dictated by clear and proven underlying mechanisms that prohibit current modern database and application technology from scaling much further." More broadly, I don't agree with the idea that if something makes sense for the Amazons and Googles of the world, it should be adopted for run-of-the-mill web applications. Amazon and Google can afford to write tons of infrastructure from scratch and hand-tune it to match their performance and scalability requirements; the typical web app developer cannot, but then again, the typical web app has totally different requirements. Simply generalizing from the top end of the cost vs. scalability tradeoff downward doesn't make a lot of sense. Doing joins and referential integrity in the application layer has real costs -- discarding 30 years of technology overnight has real tradeoffs that the article doesn't even bother considering. The article does have one redeeming feature: the linked-to interview with Stonebraker and Margo Seltzer is worth reading. http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1260000/1255430/p16-stanik.htm?key1=1255430&key2=3880943811&coll=&dl=ACM&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618 http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1260000/1255430/p16-stanik.h...