Fair enough. But can you think of any nontrivial application categories where this approach actually makes sense?

I’m all in favor of schema flexibility, and of doing integrity checks programmatically rather than declaratively when the tradeoffs justify it. But in SimpleDB I don’t see an easy way to code the integrity checks, I don’t see an easy way to assure transaction integrity, and I don’t see an easy way to query the data.

What am I missing?

CAM

This is aimed at web-centric developers who don’t use the features of the DBMS in any case. E.g. the Web2.0 crrowd who are using toolsets like Ruby on Rails and PHP.

I’m not saying it’s a good idea but a lot of the current technologies encourage the developer to treate the database as a glorified card store. Which is exactly what SimpleDB is.

I often see tips on ways to remove or avoid “inconvenient” or “slow” features of the DB like referential integrity and transactions!

Joe