NoSQL? Never Heard of It, Say Most IT Pros

We write regularly here at ReadWriteWeb about various NoSQL solutions – how the scientists at CERN use CouchDB or how the social game Farmville utilizes Membase, for example – tracking how and why non-relational databases are developed and implemented.

As we’ve chronicled, NoSQL tools have been developed to meet the changing demands to databases, as arguably the traditional relational database is not optimized for the elasticity, the scale, or distributed nature of today’s computing. And as such NoSQL tools like Cassandra and MongoDB have become an important part of many Web startups (Facebook, in the case of the former and Foursquare, in the case of the latter, for example.)

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But outside these companies, how much penetration has NoSQL really seen?

A recent survey of 755 IT professionals undertaken by Information Week found that less than 5% of respondents are using or piloting NoSQL databases in their companies.

And 44% had never even heard of NoSQL.

That means a long road ahead for the NoSQL “movement,” not just in terms of implementing the technologies but in terms of educating IT professionals about the benefits of NoSQL solutions. And it’s also quite a testament to the staying power of the relational database.