Flipping an old proverb on its head, the Healthcare.gov website debacle has many fathers, at least if you follow  the finger pointing. One of those “fathers” was the choice of a NoSQL database to run parts of the site, according to the New York Times.

Since the problem-plagued rollout of Healthcare.gov, there’s been a lot of blame to go around — between the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the contractors, including CGI Federal, that had to build the site. What I hadn’t heard till now was that the choice of MarkLogic, a NoSQL database may also have played a role. According to the story:

Another sore point was the Medicare agency’s decision to use database software, from a company called MarkLogic, that managed the data differently from systems by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. CGI officials argued that it would slow work because it was…