[jimbokun]

The only reason to ever use a non-relational db is for scalability and performance reasons. Joins and transactions are hard to do correctly and efficiently in a distributed system. So “NoSQL” solutions can be a good fit if your data is too big to fit on a single host and you can get by without joins and transactions.

(This is a massive oversimplification, but still used rule of thumb.)

[gf000]

> if your data is too big to fit on a single host

And most companies vastly overestimate their data, and believe it to be "big", when it could be trivially handled decades ago by server-grade hardware.

[9rx]

> The only reason to ever use a non-relational db is for scalability and performance reasons.

And, most importantly, lack of market availability. Nobody is going to sell you a relational database nowadays, and rolling your own is... daring. Postgres was the last serious kick at a relational database, but even it eventually gave into becoming tablational when it abandoned QUEL and adopted SQL.

But tablational databases are arguably better for most use-cases, not to mention easier to understand for those who don't come from a math background. There is good reason tablational databases are the default choice.