No SQL or No Join?
Daniel Lemire:
However, in practice, SQL is based on joins and related low-level issues like foreign keys. SQL entices people to normalize their data. Normalization fragments databases into smaller tables which is great for data integrity and beneficial for some transactional systems. However, joins are expensive. Moreover, joins require strong consistency and fixed schemas.
In turn, avoiding join operations makes it possible to maintain flexible or informal schemas, and to scale horizontally. Thus, the NoSQL solutions should really be called NoJoin because they are mostly defined by avoidance of the join operation.
via: http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2010/06/28/nosql-or-nojoin/
