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I am new to databases and am currently comparing RDBMS and Key-Value database systems. I understand that Key-Value database systems like NoSQL are optimized for horizontal scaling and relational database systems are optimized for vertical scaling. Is there a reason why vertical scaling is not efficient in K-V database systems? If not, why aren't K-V database systems used everywhere?

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krthkskmr
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    SO is more suited for practical programming problems. – PM 77-1 Jan 25 '16 at 01:59
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    SO: [Difference between scaling horizontally and vertically for databases](http://stackoverflow.com/q/11707879/3404097) Wikipedia: [Horizontal and vertical scaling / Database scalability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability#Horizontal_and_vertical_scaling) PS The relational model is about structuring data by a table for each relationship. It says nothing about implementation. If current RDBMSs do not scale in a direction then it is because the vendors have chosen not to optimize/commodify those use cases. Also, per those links, it isn't clear that H vs V aligns with NoSQL vs RDBMS. – philipxy Jan 25 '16 at 08:25
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    Why aren't K-V used evreywhere? Because there are many other critreia to a useful system besides vertical and horizontal scaling. Even then I don't think your assertions are correct anyway – Nick.Mc Sep 06 '17 at 06:58

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It's not as simple as you think.

There are a couple of articles and talks on this controversial issue. While NoSQL Systems have many benefits but obviously they have underlying issues. Just to mention a few, you may consider NoSQL databases are relevantly new and an organization needs to invest in educating its engineers in order to make use of NoSQL. On the other hand, SQL is too old that means it has a handhold of useful tools for monitoring, analyzing, logging, etc. And the most important problem, is due to CAP principle, you may not have a database architecture that can handle Consistency, Availability and Partition tolerance together. So, NoSQLs are losing some features in order to scale, e.g. they might not be consistent but they have gradual consistency.

But I recommend you to go further and not only rely on my answer. Technology is changing fast and tomorrow you may consider my opinion deprecated! While this is not new, but I consider this article as a good starting point.

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