Henry Baker on relational database scam

He uses "Bill of Materials" as an example poorly suited to relational databases.

I've spent a decade working on a Bill of Materials in relational databases, I can say that superificially he's right, any data that can't be nicely represented in a an Excel file is simpler to implement in a document/object database.

In practice, the normalization, consistent data structure, query language, ACID and data integretiy gaurentees will result in far fewer bugs and maintence headaches down the line.

Relational Databaseses are the worst, except for all the rest.

Interesting rant, but wrong. Object databases never took off. The relational model doesn’t fit every application but neither does any other model.

The “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” theory was discredited a long time ago, and this article recapitulates that misleading idea.