One Database, Many Instances: How to Have the Best of Both Worlds By Integrating SQL and NoSQL

People are intrigued that NoSQL databases are exploring different data models that promise much easier scaling and fault tolerance. But these same people are justifiably daunted by the prospect of abandoning their extensive SQL-based applications, retraining their developers to interact with databases in new ways and then rebuilding applications from scratch (applications are rarely ported from SQL to NoSQL). So it’s an appealing thought: being able to port existing SQL apps with little or no development work, take advantage immediately of scaling and fault tolerance, and adapt to a NoSQL API to take advantage of schema flexibility and enhanced performance.