i dont have much experience with NoSQL, but the typical use is for document storage where structures can have varying levels of depth and differing schemas or d

i dont have much experience with NoSQL, but the typical use is for document storage where structures can have varying levels of depth and differing schemas or different schema versions. personally, i think a lot of the NoSQL benefits are hype for most use-cases. relational databases will get you very far when used correctly. a good method of learning is to use some really large dataset and come up with some questions you want answered about the set, then write sql to get that information out. if your queries take a long time, begin indexing and looking at how the queries can be rewritten to return results faster. i cannot recommend a good, large interconnected/relational data source, but something like zipcode databases [1] can get you started. you can also play with geo-spatial indexing to find zipcodes within x miles of each other. [2] [1] http://download.geonames.org/export/zip/ http://download.geonames.org/export/zip/ [2] http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2013/10/21/using-the-new-spatial-functions-in-mysql-5-6-for-geo-enabled-applications/ http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2013/10/21/using-the-new...