What do you mean by "not generally a good idea"? In the past I've had little cause to complain about using XML fields to store and search semi-structured data

What do you mean by "not generally a good idea"? In the past I've had little cause to complain about using XML fields to store and search semi-structured data in MS SQL Server. I have read that it doesn't scale out as nicely as document stores do, and knowing SQL Server I don't have trouble believing that. Personally I'm a very long way away from needing to worry about scale out[1] in the applications I use a DBMS for, though, so that's never really kept me up at night. Word I've heard on the street is that the story's similar for PostgreSQL. [1]: http://yourdatafitsinram.com http://yourdatafitsinram.com