[development] Database / SQL future thoughts

[Jeff Eaton]

On May 5, 2009, at 3:12 PM, Bertrand Mansion wrote:

> For CCK, it wouldn't even be needed because Tokyo Cabinet tables, like
> CouchDB's, can have arbitrary number of fields. It is your application
> which decides which fields are required, not your database.


Right. That's the easy part, though -- Drupal is a generalized web CMS  
and the problem is not "storing buckets of data" but "storing them in  
a way that is flexible enough for ad-hoc queries to be done  
efficiently using tools like Views." I think it's fair to say that CCK  
is useful, but without Views and its level of "smart" flexibility,  
Drupal would not be the success that it is today.

Am I mistaken in thinking that the loss of efficient ad-hoc queries is  
one of the tradeoffs inherent in moving to the 'bucket of data' model?

--Jeff