Choosing between SQL or NoSQL document-oriented databases

As a software architect, you may consider some aspects of SQL and NoSQL databases to decide the best storage option for you. In many cases, both will be needed. The key point here will surely be how organized your data is and how big the database will become.

In the previous section, we stated that NoSQL document-oriented databases should be preferred when data has almost no predefined structure. They not only keep variable attributes close to their owners, but they also keep some related objects close since they allow related objects to be nested inside properties and collections.

Unstructured data can be represented in relational databases if variable properties of a tuple (t) can be placed in a connected table containing the property name, property value, and the external key of t. However, the problem in this scenario is performance. In fact, property values that belong to a single object would be spread all over...