While NoSQL has made great strides, it will need improvements in multiple areas in order to gain wider acceptance, Max Schireson, the CEO of MongoDB NoSQL database vendor 10gen, said.

NoSQL databases are known for being able to handle great amounts of data that does not necessarily fit well into the relational model, but there is work to be done in areas such as security and manageability in order for NoSQL to gain more adoption, said Schireson at the recent NoSQL Now 2013 conference in San Jose, Calif. "There's lots of work to do before NoSQL as a sector can win."

The NoSQL ecosystem, he said, needs to mature before it can go from a 15- to 20-percent usage level to being used across all organizations with large-scale IT needs. NoSQL needs security improvements like encryption of data and integration with Kerberos and LDAP. It also needs improvements in manageability and integration. Problems like fragmentation and lack of standardization also need to be addressed, Schireson said, noting that NoSQL needs to be made more accessible for users and that it should be easier to do queries and to query different things in new ways.

He also stressed NoSQL vendor priorities, saying that "we need to value user success over short-term monetization." For example, free, open source downloads need to be well-tested and solid. Vendors also must understand what their products can do better than anything else out there and build a product ecosystem, Schireson said.

Improvement already is being seen in the number of persons with NoSQL skills, but it is still a small number, Schireson said. He cited the presence of 50,000 developers with MongoDB skills listed on their LinkedIn accounts. "[The] skill base is growing rapidly." NoSQL already has been embraced by large IT companies like IBM and Microsoft, Schireson noted, further predicting that relational databases will continue to be a big part of the market, but not as dominant as they are today.

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