Relational databases provide a very solid foundation upon which a wide variety of replication, partitioning and data distribution schemes can be constructed. J

Relational databases provide a very solid foundation upon which a wide variety of replication, partitioning and data distribution schemes can be constructed. Just look at the different approaches that PostgreSQL supports: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/different-replication-solutions.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/different-replicat... Other relational DB systems, from Oracle, to SQL Server, and even MySQL, offer similar functionality. Practice shows that they're very capable of successfully handling many different scenarios, even if some of these scenarios hadn't been considered decades ago when these relational database systems were first implemented. But that's just what happens when the core building blocks they do provide are so solid and fundamentally sound. It's only anecdotal evidence, but of all of the DB professionals I've worked with over the years, the ones who complained the least were always the ones working with some sort of relational DB system. The ones who complained the most have been working with some NoSQL database system. I've heard nothing but praise for the PostgreSQL documentation, while we repeatedly see submissions like this one asking for help with NoSQL scalability problems that just don't happen when using PostgreSQL, or Oracle, or SQL Server, or DB2, or MySQL, or even SQLite!