Alex Popescu of myNoSQL sides with Jim Webber in thinking we need to avoid a “winner-takes-it-all-war” among database advocates.
Saying that people should pick the best store for their data model is a nice sentiment but I rather doubt it will change long or short term outcomes between competing data stores.
I don’t know that anything will but I do have a concrete suggestion that might stand a chance in the short run at any rate.
We are all familiar with the “to many eyes all bugs are shallow” and other Ben Franklin like sayings.
OK, so rather than seeing another dozen or two dozen or more, data stores this year, that is 2012, why not pick an existing store, learn the community and offer your talents, writing code, tests, debugging, creating useful documentation, creating tutorials, etc.
The data store community, if you look for database projects at Sourceforge for example, is like a professional sports league with too many teams. The talent is so spread out that there are only one or two very successful teams and the others, well, are not so great.
If all of the existing data store projects picked up another 100 volunteers each, there would be enough good code, documentation and other resources to hold off both major/minor vendors and other store projects.
The various store projects would have to welcome volunteers. That means doing more than protesting the way it is done is the best possible way for whatever to be done.
If we don’t continue to have a rich ecosystem of store projects, it won’t be entirely the fault of vendors nor winner-take-it-all-wars. A lack of volunteers and acceptance of volunteers will share part of the blame.