I think the point here is that persistent storage is evolving. RDBMS are fine for just about any task you can throw at them, but then so is Perl. However, neit

I think the point here is that persistent storage is evolving. RDBMS are fine for just about any task you can throw at them, but then so is Perl. However, neither is usually going to be the best solution. What is implied is that RDBMS have inherent complications not due to volumes of data, but rather due to to complexities of using them (both from a sys admin, and developer point of view) particularly when HA is required. I, for one, look forward to a more loosely typed flexible persistence layer than RDBMS however it may come. BTW: Any form of data persistence is an alternative to an RDBMS!?