This document discusses relational database management systems (RDBMS) and NoSQL databases. It notes that while SQL is useful for flat data, it does not scale well for large, unstructured, distributed data. The CAP theorem is discussed, noting that databases must sacrifice availability, consistency, or partition tolerance. Several categories of NoSQL databases are described, including document, graph, columnar, and key-value stores. Factors like scalability, transactions, data modeling, querying and access are compared between SQL and NoSQL options. The performance of different databases is evaluated for read-write workloads. The future of polyglot persistence using multiple database technologies is envisioned.