We actually use a storage format very similar to the FriendFeed schema in Dari. Dari is a open source Java persistence layer with a full query API that stores a

We actually use a storage format very similar to the FriendFeed schema in Dari. Dari is a open source Java persistence layer with a full query API that stores all it's data in a JSON blob in one table with a few extra tables for indexing the JSON data. https://github.com/perfectsense/dari https://github.com/perfectsense/dari Here is the SQL schema: https://github.com/perfectsense/dari/blob/master/db/src/main/resources/mysql/schema-12.sql https://github.com/perfectsense/dari/blob/master/db/src/main... We've used this model for almost five years now with great success. It's simplified rolling out "schema changes" since no tables need to be changed. It's also been optimized to a point where it's extremely fast.