Your comment triggered again a thought of mine: What if we had a perfect data store? What would it look like? I think it would have these properties: - instant

Your comment triggered again a thought of mine: What if we had a perfect data store? What would it look like? I think it would have these properties: - instant access to the most current data from anywhere in the world (no need for replication) - infinite storage space (no need for gc) - instant access to any value in the dataset (any joins are ok, indexing not needed) Obviously we are not there, but let's suppose we had such a tool, I think going the append-only way would make sense, and data deletion would only happen proactively (e.g. for legal or privacy reasons). Also, in fact a good database is trying to mimic this perfect storage, and some of its users are hitting the boudaries. Anyway, when you feel that a database is not perfect in this sense, and need to adjust your usage, it means you met a boundary, which may not be there anymore in a few years. Another angle is that maybe there is a physical limit to data transfer that will stop the evolution of datastores. A bit like speed of light, or would the speed of light already put noticable boundaries to this hypothetical perfect datastore?