Legitimate Uses of the Antipattern
It’s hard to justify using the EAV antipattern in a relational database. You have to compromise too many features that are strengths of the relational paradigm. But that doesn’t address the legitimate need in some applications to support dynamic attributes.
Most applications that need schemaless data really need it for only a few tables or even just one table. The rest of your data requirements conform to standard table designs. If you account for the extra work and risk of EAV in your project plan, it may be the lesser evil to use it sparingly. But keep in mind that experienced database consultants report that systems using EAV become unwieldy within a year.
If you have nonrelational data management needs, ...
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