Posts tagged “software architecture”

I explain how databases actually work: what a DBMS is, why relational databases use tables, why NoSQL became a marketing term for mostly-in-memory stores, how your app connects to a database, and how replication and network topology affect consistency versus availability. A deep dive sparked by one friend's simple question.

ORM looks great early in a project but breaks down as complexity grows, forcing you to learn SQL anyway. Relations aren't objects. Either use NoSQL for object-like data or write a model layer with real SQL. ORM's abstraction is leaky, its efficiency poor, and the alternatives are better.

SQL is ugly but powerful, ORM is genuinely dumb, and "NoSQL" should really be called OMADS: Obviously More Appropriate Data Stores. Start every project with an RDBMS, add specialized stores where they fit, and stop apologizing for using SQL. Forty years on, nothing beats it for ad-hoc questions about your data.