I’d like to point out that although relational databases have proven their strength in some types of applications (e.g. transaction banking apps where complex relationships (in particular hierarchical) are not used).
However, it is true that some RDBMS limits are clear now since at least 10 years (mainly hierarchies are a pain, as well as (often related to that) complex queries can get pages and pages long and quite unreadable / unmaintainable).
Strangely RDBMS seem to remain quite dominant (a lot of specialized consultants are around and books and training of course … this slows down investment in new technology). However, very performing alternatives exist for many years.
I invite you to have a look at neo4j (graph database). You’ll discover that it is more relational than RDBMS 
because the relation itself becomes a first class citizen (having it’s own properties). Also the query language is such a pleasure compared to SQL (much more compact and closer to the natural intent of the query).
My intention is certainly not to criticize gratuitously all the beautiful work done for Elixir.
I also have no intention to hurt anyone’s feelings in this forum.
It is with a lot of respect for all of you, I write this chat !
I’m sure that in many cases Ecto helps the developer out very well (I’m new to Elxir at this stage, but I guess it must resemble ActiveRecord from Ruby?).
However for many use cases, graph databases are definitely the right choice.
Having it as a first class citizen in Elixir (just as an alternative next to RDBMS, not necessarily replacing it) would leave the freedom up to the developer to choose the option that fits his use case best.
So it’s not about something being “old”. I know theories of decades ago that still hold their value as of today. Most wine only gets better with age 
.
But in this case it’s good to acknowledge that alternatives exist.
It’d perhaps be nice to “open” up Elixir to them?
I will attempt to use neo4j with Elixir and I hope it won’t be too much of a pain.
When I will have done so, I’ll share my experience.
Enjoy the weekend! Stay safe.
Marc
