>So then you have to determine, did we save enough money on the design side (using NoSQL over SQL) and then piss it away on reporting?
I spent two years early in my career as a report writer. It sucked horribly, but I learned how important reports are to the business. I remember a professor telling me that any business application reporting is 50% of the value. This is something many developers don't even consider.
Having said that, the solution, as I understand it for the reporting issue with NoSQL is to move your NoSQL data to a proper warehouse for reporting/BI. You'll of course need an ETL layer to do all that, and the ETL layer will need to be smart enough to handle very nullable data and data structures that often get extra, unknown properties, etc.
This solution continues to work even when you have multiple, loosely coupled NoSQL databases handling various parts of a larger system and various separate systems.
I spent two years early in my career as a report writer. It sucked horribly, but I learned how important reports are to the business. I remember a professor telling me that any business application reporting is 50% of the value. This is something many developers don't even consider.
Having said that, the solution, as I understand it for the reporting issue with NoSQL is to move your NoSQL data to a proper warehouse for reporting/BI. You'll of course need an ETL layer to do all that, and the ETL layer will need to be smart enough to handle very nullable data and data structures that often get extra, unknown properties, etc.
This solution continues to work even when you have multiple, loosely coupled NoSQL databases handling various parts of a larger system and various separate systems.