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Comment by scott_s | Hacker News Reader

“NoSQL” is a misnomer. NoSQL databases aren’t designed to abandon SQL, the structured query language used pull information from traditional databases such as Oracle and MySQL. A better name would be “non-relational database.” NoSQL databases don’t use the neat tables of data that underpin relational databases.

Thank you. I've been beating that drum for a while. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4566423, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4044572, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=899758, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=853284)

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An actual relational database not bound to the SQL nightmare would be something interesting indeed.

I haven't been that impressed with Tutorial D. I spent some time thinking about better ways to query relational and graph data; http://canonical.org/~kragen/binary-relations.html are some unfinished notes from that time.

Datalog is an existing thing in that space that's pretty sane.

What "SQL nightmare" is this?

For the record, I mostly work on "NoSQL" databases now (am an HBase committer). But I have no qualms with SQL, and it is certainly not a nightmare.

The godawful syntax (UPDATE vs INSERT). The godawful semantics -- it's not closed under composition, for instance; too, it is not set based, which means all kinds of hideous contortions with DISTINCT and whatnot.

I don't have much time for the K/V stores (save Redis) but I'm also sick like unto death with SQL.

Like lots of words, it caught on because it was catchy, not because it was etymologically accurate.

This is 2012, we don't want names that make sense. What the hell does the word "Uber" have to do with cabs? If my startup was vrxpubz.ly and was a way for kittens to upload cat litter into their social graph, I'd be good for at $500K in seed.

I'm not experienced with NoSQL but the name has confused me ever since I've read about it. I believe it stands for "Not only SQL" but the abbreviation really seems to hint that it abandons all SQL.

As far as I know, "not only SQL" is a backronym, coined because of that confusion.

I suspect that is correct, as it seems that "NoSQL" was a glib name for an informal meeting (http://nosql.eventbrite.com/), and was not necessarily intended to live on.

Yep, as briefly mentioned in the OP: http://blog.sym-link.com/2009/10/30/nosql_whats_in_a_name.ht...

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