> The worst thing is: the cool crowd doesn't even know what they are missing.
Actually, they do. A lot of the people interested in and writing code for these new databases are the ones who have seen first-hand the failures of the traditional DBA view of the world. If you look at where a lot of these projects are coming from and who are sponsoring them you will see that they are some of the companies that are at the leading edge of internet scaling and deployment. The advantage they have which you seem to ignore is that they can look back at the wrong turns in the development of the current crop of RDBMS and avoid those particular dead-ends.
Actually, they do. A lot of the people interested in and writing code for these new databases are the ones who have seen first-hand the failures of the traditional DBA view of the world. If you look at where a lot of these projects are coming from and who are sponsoring them you will see that they are some of the companies that are at the leading edge of internet scaling and deployment. The advantage they have which you seem to ignore is that they can look back at the wrong turns in the development of the current crop of RDBMS and avoid those particular dead-ends.