Really, this is just "NoSQL for the web". And I have the same problem with it that I have with all NoSQL APIs, which is that it's not noticeably simpler or more

Really, this is just "NoSQL for the web". And I have the same problem with it that I have with all NoSQL APIs, which is that it's not noticeably simpler or more performant, it just looks a bit more "object-y". As you note, it doesn't even have a way of doing joins. (There's no reason you couldn't support SQL in the browser that allowed you to create tables with indexes) The reason the SQL standard exists is not because it's the absolute best way of accessing structured data, but because a standard way of accessing structured data is useful in and of itself. It has economies of training and learning and allows for some limited amount of portability between DB engines. In 5 years, somebody is going to invent some kind of meta-API that allows you to use a single common API to access all of cassandra, couchdb, mongodb, and the rest, and I'm just going to laugh and laugh.