Interview Guides
Data platform decisions affect application design, reporting, scalability, and operational risk. In an enterprise environment such as Eli Lilly's analytics and operational systems, choosing between relational and non-relational databases has direct implications for consistency, flexibility, and integration.
You are asked to explain the differences between SQL and NoSQL databases. Compare them across data model, schema design, query patterns, transaction guarantees, and scaling approach. You should also describe when you would choose each one, and how those trade-offs matter for workloads such as structured reporting, transactional systems, or high-volume semi-structured data ingestion.
Keep the answer at an interview level: define both clearly, contrast their strengths and weaknesses, and give practical examples. You do not need to go deep into vendor-specific internals, but you should be precise about concepts like ACID, schema rigidity versus flexibility, and horizontal scaling in distributed systems.
