There has been a lot of hype in the last 3-4 years around NoSQL databases. Note that NoSQL isn't Not SQL, but rather Not Only SQL, implying that the SQL language still has a place here. In fact, a number of companies that make NoSQL products have layered a SQL-like interpreter or interface on their products to allow familiar SQL language querying.

One of the big reasons companies look at NoSQL is that the various types of databases have lent themselves to scaling easier than traditional RDBMS systems. In the CAP Theorem, these systems tend to be more in the AP range, sacrificing some consistency for scale and performance. That seems crazy to RDBMS people, but if you really think about your application, consistency that is delayed on the order of seconds or less isn't that bad in most applications. Even seconds might not matter in many reporting scenarios.

The thing is, databases aren't perfect, and that goes for NoSQL systems. I ran across a post where MongoDB sometimes loses consistency within a single node. Now, this isn't within a single document, so changes there are transactionally handled well (as we RDBMS people think of them), but for a query, you could have rows drop out and reappear according to some criteria, sometimes within a few minutes or seconds of each query.

That is disturbing. In fact, I'd be terrified of this, mostly because I'd spend a lot of time trying to explain why and getting yelled out. Do you know how many times I've had business people run a report and then someone else run the report a minute later and try to compare things? If I had whole documents dropping out of one or the other, that would be maddening.

Now, there are ways to fix this in a MongoDB database, and I'm not disparaging MongoDB over this. It's a fine system and there are some good applications built on MongoDB that work well. There are some fine applications running on Neo4j, and on Couchbase, and other NoSQL systems. Some of these database work better than an RDBMS in managing particular workloads and problem domains. Some applications and workloads would do well with a NoSQL or a traditional relational database.

The important thing to understand is how your system works. Your organization should understand what allows a database to scale and what doesn't, what things limit HA/DR capabilities, which items might impact consistency across nodes or systems. In the SQL Server world, if you use Availability Groups, you should certainly understand what consistency means for the different databases in the same AG.

NoSQL databases aren't better or worse than relational databases by themselves. Finding a good fit for a particular database platform and your application requires some knowledge and planning. Ensuring a successful application is often less about the technology, and more about the people that architect and code the solution. Worry more about the latter than the former and you should be successful at building software.