The thing that bugs me about the 'NoSQL' name is that it seems to lump together "relational vs key-value/object store" and "centralised vs distributed" as one and the same distinction. They're not.
Databases based on the relational model can be distributed, 'post-modern' as this guy puts it, too.
There's some interesting work by logician/comp-sci/AI folks in this area, applying epistemic (and other modal) logics to multi-agent knowledge base scenarios, but I think it got a bit forgotten about because of its association with AI (think: lots of robots going around gathering knowledge which may or may not be consistent with eachother) rather than more mundane things like distributed relational databases.
Databases based on the relational model can be distributed, 'post-modern' as this guy puts it, too.
There's some interesting work by logician/comp-sci/AI folks in this area, applying epistemic (and other modal) logics to multi-agent knowledge base scenarios, but I think it got a bit forgotten about because of its association with AI (think: lots of robots going around gathering knowledge which may or may not be consistent with eachother) rather than more mundane things like distributed relational databases.
Here's a course I remember taking on the subject, which might interest anyone who thinks 'post-modern' databases or models of knowledge are interesting: http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/teaching/courses/multiagent/index...