The Death of SQL: Why Your Next Database Should Be NoSQL or Beyond

When I started my career, SQL was the king. Every project used it. Every interview asked about it. I loved writing SQL queries and joining tables. It felt powerful.

But a few years later, I found myself asking:
“Is SQL still the right tool for modern systems?”

After working on some fast-growing apps and systems, I realized that in many cases — SQL just isn’t enough anymore.

Let me share my experience

The Project That Changed My Mind

A while ago, I was helping a team build an e-commerce platform. We used a traditional SQL database (PostgreSQL) for everything: users, products, orders, reviews, carts — all in separate tables, all connected with foreign keys.

It worked great in the beginning.

But as traffic grew, so did our problems:

• Pages loaded slowly because of too many joins
• We struggled to scale the database vertically
• Schema changes were painful and risky
• Some queries took 10+ seconds under load

We kept trying to optimize indexes, rewrite queries, or move logic to the app layer. But nothing really solved…