Some people choose nosql alternatives because they've spent time analyzing the performance of a proper relational model and have determined that an RDBMS will generate too much overhead for their data load and consciously accept the tradeoffs involved in giving up automated referential integrity.

Most people, though, choose nosql alternatives because they're too lazy to learn how to model data.

> have determined that an RDBMS will generate too much overhead

I think the read/write overhead is mostly a function of schema design, rather than an intrinsic property of an RDBMS. Denormalized schemas have similar performance profiles to document-oriented storage.

Moreover, mainstream SQL databases like Postgres are getting better and better at indexing jsonb fields, indexing time series data with BRIN, rudimentary full-text search, offering a one-size-fits-all storage system that may not be the best at everything, but will be good enough to support a growing business to its next funding round.

johnthescott

for text search the rum index is quite robust. my guess is that rum (or something like it) will be introduced into the pg core soon. we index many terabytes of pdf files excellent performance.

   https://github.com/postgrespro/rum

also, postgrespro are behind the json/b indexing.