When I read the news today that the NHS had moved from an Oracle database to a NoSQL alternative I remembered this comment made by Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle, when being asked how his company would respond to his competitors.

“workday.. they don’t use a database. They use an object store so they can’t really do reporting” – Larry Ellison

This sounds like he may be fighting new wars with old rules. There are no silver bullets or magic pills when it comes to software solutions – there is often a compromise to be made. NoSQL provides a solution for distributed databases using low cost hardware that is being adopted by modern cloud computing and big data services. Of course Larry makes a good point to reveal the weaknesses of his competitors but being different doesn’t mean deficient. The United States national health service site HealthCare.Gov might have had site launch problems because they did’t have the necessary skills to manage their NoSQL choice but the cat is out of the bag – “Not Only SQL” is an option that is being embraced. It will be interesting to see how the traditional database providers will respond.

PS: Gov.UK is also on NoSQL