I rather got the feeling that the datastore was much better for certain kinds of things than SQL. However, unless you are an expert in both SQL and the use of

I rather got the feeling that the datastore was much better for certain kinds of things than SQL. However, unless you are an expert in both SQL and the use of BigTable, how would you know when to use the one over the other? Okay, so obviously SQL is 'designed' to be good at transactions (whether it is or not is an exercise for the readers), and BigTable is really good for fuzzy search. I'm guessing that SQL is actually going to be more useful for anyone doing e-commerce (hence transactions) or anyone with familiarity with traditional SQL based persistence (even - shock horror - JDBC). SQL is bland, BigTable is sexy. But another word for bland is mature...