The document discusses the evolution of online transaction processing (OLTP) databases and introduces NewSQL as a solution. It notes that traditional OLTP (OldSQL) is too slow and does not scale for modern high-volume applications (New OLTP). NoSQL databases provide performance but lack consistency guarantees and a SQL interface. NewSQL databases preserve SQL and consistency while providing the performance and scalability needed for New OLTP through innovative architectures. VoltDB is provided as an example NewSQL database that is over 45x faster than traditional OLTP databases and scales to over 1.6 million transactions per second.