What makes Cassandra (and NoSQL in general) a better solution to an RDBMS?

Question

Well, NoSQL is a buzzword right now so I\'ve been looking into it. I\'m yet to get my head around ColumnFamilies and SuperColumns, etc... But I have been looking at how the data

Answer 1

The advantage fo NoSql is that its simpler and if you have your OO blinkers on it fullfills all your persistence needs.

The advantage of SQL based realtional database is that you can easily re-use and extend your data in ways that were not envisaged in the original design. Also "Object" databases tend to perform very badly (even if its possable) when you want to do the equivalent of SQLs aggregate queries like COUNT, SUM, AVG.

Googles BIGTABLE which is the biggest OO database anywhere (and probably the biggest database period) also supports SQL and sql features like indexing and strong typing.