I agree that for most requirements I have, an SQL database can deliver the data I need, quickly, unless I am missing an index or using an ORM tool. For Atomic,

I agree that for most requirements I have, an SQL database can deliver the data I need, quickly, unless I am missing an index or using an ORM tool. For Atomic, put all the related stuff in a document and commit it. Your issue with home pages has a couple of obvious solutions: 1. Deal with the fact that some users don't have a home page and consider them not yet signed up. 2. Create the home page first, before you create the user 3. Put the home page in the user document, or put the user document in the home page document. Going with a NonSQL store gives you more than speed, it gives you simplicity and flexibility along some dimensions. We run our SQL database with replication and the replication is not synchronous. If we really loose our primary (bomb blast), the replica can be out of date and we can loose data. We are a very large company, and all the databases are configured like this. Many NoSQL solutions (Google) are configured more conservatively.