FoundationDB Inc. reportedly intends to open a new front in its war against the conventional wisdom of database design with the planned addition of another configuration option for its adaptive key-value store. If and when the move materializes, the startup can expect to draw considerably more competition from the NoSQL camp.

Established in 2009, FoundationDB has spent the last six years trying to address the trade-off between availability and consistency that has plagued the database world for decades. The problem, as articulated in Eric Brewer’s CAP theorem, lies in the fact that a system must make certain sacrifices to preserve functionality when scaling across multiple machines.

In practice, that means that the distributed non-relational databases that have emerged in response to the explosion of unstructured information typically don’t provide the same kind of reliability as conventional alternatives from the likes of Oracle. The area where new-generation systems are lacking the most is ACID compliance, which requires certain guarantees that a transaction has been processed.

FoundationDB claims to combine the best of old and new in its key-value store, which implements an algorithm called Paxos to handle updates with the reliability of a relational database while still accommodating the growing unstructured knowledge troves driving the industry shift toward NoSQL. The platform implements a layered architecture that makes it possible to harness that functionality for handling a wide range of workloads.

But despite its adaptiveness, the system currently only offers base key-value support and a structured query overlay, which leaves users to implement their own models for more advanced actions such as graph processing. According to The Register, FoundationDB is working to change that with a forthcoming document store that is currently in testing with select customers.

The addition could make the platform much more attractive for storing unstructured information, enabling users to treat datasets as objects instead of having to manually connect the dots among disparate details. That could take much of the hassle out of generating queries, saving time and effort while allowing for more accurate results.

The downside is that the move would position FoundationDB more directly against established document stores such as MongoDB and Apache Cassandra, which also implements Paxos although without the same kind of reliability. That’s in addition to the startup’s existing competition, which includes other key-value engines and graph databases as well as MarkLogic Corp.’s namesake platform.

The latter is the biggest challenger to FoundationDB, offering the same combination of ACID compliance and a Swiss Army knife approach to running multiple workloads. The pitch is similar: Both firms offer to help organizations consolidate the number of databases in their environments.

The upcoming document store should help level the playing field. It’s reportedly set to hit general availability sometime in 2015, presumably later rather than sooner in the year considering that the most recent version of FoundationDB only rolled out a few weeks ago.