After 30 years of architecture based on RDBMS, it's my opinion that _starting_ with a relational model ends up hiding and obfuscating business functionality at the expense of relational paradigms.

I didn't say relational databases are bad. I said it was an anti-pattern. In my mind, relational databases should be mostly used in data warehouses, reporting, and analytical systems.

Transactional systems are better suited to document databases and CQRS.