Standardisation and Open Source

NoSQL are open source solutions. This may accelerate their spread and popularity among big data users. However, it could be also a disadvantage as it does not promote standardisations practices. In fact, each NoSQL Database differs from the other ones. This is also true for their supported queries. Indeed, as far as we know, there is no yet a reliable standard for NoSQL databases. Each one has its own query language. Developers and administrators thus face the challenge to learn and be trained for each NoSQL available solution. Instead, relation databases are standardised and have a common SQL language.

Maturity

Due to their popularity, relational databases are commonly used worldwide inside enterprises. They have been used for a long time. Thus, they provide a common query language, rich features and enjoy a greater acceptance. There are also multiple professionals and consultant that can support enterprises to exploit, manage and administer their traditional databases. This fact supports their proliferation and increases their maturity as many experts can participate to report weaknesses and enhance the use of relational databases.

Instead, even though that NoSQL stores have emerged for more than ten years ago and are developer-friendly, they still lag behind in term of widespread acceptance. In fact, NoSQL databases are still relatively immature in comparison to relational databases. Additionally, there is a lack of developers and administrators that master those types of databases. This slows down their gain of maturity.