Use cases for NoSQL

Question

NoSQL has been getting a lot of attention in our industry recently. I'm really interested in what peoples thoughts are on the best use-cases for its use over relational database storage. What should trigger a developer into thinking that particular datasets are more suited to a NoSQL solution? I'm particularly interested in MongoDB and CouchDB as they seem to be getting the most coverage with regard to PHP development and that is my focus.

Answer 1

NoSQL has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with usability. Document stores are just easier to work with when your atomic data units are document-like because it's trivial to serialize to and from objects. It's just more fun, and that's an important factor for personal or side projects.