The example you use is Google Analytics. I've no idea how big that dataset is, but I imagine bigger than anything I've encountered before. That said, I'd do ev

The example you use is Google Analytics. I've no idea how big that dataset is, but I imagine bigger than anything I've encountered before. That said, I'd do everything you mention in a relational database. SELECT COUNT(fieldname) FROM {tablename} and all that. Are you ok with eventual consistency as a price for partition tolerance and availability? The data sizes I typically work with allow me to go with availability and consistency at the expense of partition tolerance. And that's ok because my data replicates, and my response time objectives and recovery point objectives are set to something appropriate. This is worth it to me if the benefit is an operational data store that I can query in real time without impacting writes. Still haven't heard of a scenario which would compel me to go a NoSQL only route (a scenario that isn't Google or Facebook or similar).