Non-relational database management systems address some of the limitations relational database management systems have when storing large volumes of unstructured, user generated text-based data in distributed environments. They follow different approaches through the data model they use, their ability to scale data storage over distributed servers and the programming interface they provide. An experimental approach was followed to measure the capabilities these alternative database management systems present in their approach to address the limitations of relational databases in terms of their capability to store unstructured text-based data, data warehousing capabilities, ability to scale data storage across distributed servers and the level of programming abstraction they provide. The results of the research highlighted the limitations of relational database management systems. The different database management systems do address certain limitations, but not all. Document-oriented databases provide the best results and successfully address the need to store large volumes of user generated text-based data in a distributed environment / School of Computing / M. Sc. (Computer Science)