Relational Json Database?

Question

So I'm thinking of using MongoDB for a project. But I've read about issues that is has with relational type of data. http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-mongodb/

However, I still like that it stores json and can have dynamic fields within collections. I like that it resembles my json in my app so I can easily bind to it using libraries like Angular. I use Node.js. I'm digging this whole MEAN (mongodb, express, angular, node) stack concept.

What I don't like though are these relational issues, it seems that it doesn't deal too well with real world data. Think a relational app: school/students/teachers with all sorts of relationships in them.

That said, I don't like sql. I think it's outdated especially for json/javascript based webapps and I don't like to define types, I don't like that it's hard to dynamically add fields to a table and I don't like to manually do joins.

So my question is.. is there something in the middle? Somewhere in the middle between a mysql database and a mongodb database? Maybe a normalized json store that handles the relationships for me. Or a mongo-like db that is really fast with references (as opposed to putting everything in the same document).

p.s I know there are such things as MySQL ORMs. but I want the actual database to store json, kind of like mongodb does, but just to be able to handle relational data as well.

Answer 1

Have a look at ElasticSearch. It's much more powerful than MongoDB, scales better, and it supports nested documents and joins, which are not really the same as in a relational database, but -like you say- it's somewhere inbetween.

http://www.elasticsearch.com/