[bullen]

Explicit schema is the most important feature to drop.

You cannot have a live service that is interrupted by database modifications.

My solution is to use JSON.

But the most important feature to add is HTTP as transport and async-to-async (both client and server needs to only use a thread when they are doing work, zero idling): To scale a distributed database across continents:

2000 line distributed DB: http://root.rupy.se

[regularfry]

> You cannot have a live service that is interrupted by database modifications.

So don't do that, then. Designing database migrations to be non-breaking is part of the game and if you're not doing it, you can't claim to understand the technology you're replacing. Not having an explicit schema doesn't mean you don't have to think about your schema. It just means you've chucked out all the tooling for keeping it sane.

[trashtester]

It may be the most important feature to drop, for some.

It's certainly the most important feature to KEEP for others.

Schemas allow you to keep the more critical business relationships consistent. For variable data elements, you can always use JSON columns for that.