Re:Document databases? (Score 2, Interesting)

Document databases (or textual databases, for that matter) simply aren't a good fit with the relational model

Well, one might argue also that hierarchical data is also not a good fit with the relational model. Or what do you think about "hacks" like Materialized Path or Nested Sets model, or even native XML data type? If we already have XML data type in many DBs, what prevents us having Document data type like what's in CouchDB (yes, it's proprietary, but so are many of the features in current RDBMS). MySQL is also backend storage engine agnostic and it has already a support for many different (and somewhat specialized) backend storages engies (MyISAM, InnoDB, MERGE, MEMORY (HEAP), BDB, EXAMPLE, FEDERATED, ARCHIVE, CSV, BLACKHOLE and ISAM...). Is there a change that something like CouchDB would fit in that? Damien Katz has for example said that he might consider supporting SQL syntax, but it's too early to say.