The fuss is that a "proper" database does so much more than store and retrieve data. If you've only ever used Mongo, a filesystem, and/or mysql, then you've ne

The fuss is that a "proper" database does so much more than store and retrieve data. If you've only ever used Mongo, a filesystem, and/or mysql, then you've never really used a database. Postgres (and mssql, oracle, etc) are so much richer; they are so much more than storage systems. I'm not saying you no one should ever use Mongo or MySql, I'm just saying that they are generally far inferior choices for problems bigger than mere storage. It's high time we started thinking about storage systems and the higher-level functionality of databases separately. We can make different, more informed, and generally better tradeoffs than we're currently making by viewing this broad category of software through such a foggy lens. For instance: Take a look at how Datomic utilize pluggable storage to provide a sensible information model, with raw index access and powerful, pluggable querying.