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Discussion on: Document vs Relational Databases

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Lilit Karapetyan

Just to be clear, document-oriented databases are not the same as NoSQL databases. Document-oriented databases are a subtype of NoSQL databases. Other such subtypes are Graph databases, Key-value pairs, wide-column databases. All of them have their own specifications and unique things. The advantages of flexibility you mentioned are applicable to document-oriented databases and all NoSQL ones. So, it means that after choosing between SQL and NoSQL DBs, in case you decided NoSQL, you still have to select the subtype you want to use. Of course, document-oriented DBs are the most popular now, however, the others also have the use cases where they shine and outperform the document-oriented DBs.