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It is important to realize that there is less diversity in the enterprise OLTP market than at any point in the last 20 years.  Essentially this market has been boiled down to Oracle, SQL Server & DB2 (with few isolated exceptions).   Most new deployments are typically using one of the first two options.  The lack of diversity has created a stalemate or chicken & egg situation.  Enterprises now only want to install new applications that have been built to support Oracle or SQL Server.  This is …

I have been speaking with a lot or new database vendors over the last 12 months and this has prompted me to revisit a post I wrote mid last year.  The basic premise of this post is that your strategy, and the group of people you’re selling to, largely depends on the market sector you are focusing on (Enterprise OLTP, BI/DW, Cloud & Web 2.0).

A database platform by itself is a largely pointless piece of software.  The only way value is produced from a database platform is through the applications that interact with it.  Therefore the only way to be a successful database platform is by making others successful and motivated to use your platform.

Ok, so as a database platform vendor how do you enter this market then? Well there are a few strategies.  Due to the length of this article I have broken it up into Enterprise OLTP, Enterprise Data Warehousing and Cloud & Web 2.0

Oh my. This is just immensely funny & sad at the same time - Amusing Database Videos http://www.bigdatabaselist.com/wiki/Amusing_Database_Videos

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The NoSQL event has triggered a bit of a hard time for the RDBMS the last week.  I won’t add any commentary as this follows what I have been talking about for a while, but here are some of the links.  Most notable is Michael Stonebraker’s post on the ACM site.

• The End of a DBMS Era (Might be Upon Us)
• Relational databases are dead -- who knew?
• …

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The last 24 months has seen the introduction of Map/Reduce functionality into the data processing arena in various forms.  Map/Reduce is a framework for developing scalable data processing functionality, and was popularized by Google (see this earlier post).

Pure players like Hadoop are starting to find their own niche, helped by organizations such as Cloudera.  However there has been a number of for & against arguments relating to Map/Reduce functionality inside the database.

These arguments are now really serving a moot point.  Customers have recognized value in Map/Reduce prompting some (b)leading edge database vendors to introduce such …

• Introduction
• The Problem with the Relational Database (Part 2) – Predictability

This is the first detail post in a series I am doing focusing on the issues that exist today with the Relational Database.  This first post is on the deployment model.  It could be argued that this isn’t directly related to the “relational database” but rather is an implementation model problem.  I disagree with this as many characteristics of the relational database lead to the deployment model …

• The Problem with the Relational Database (Part 1 ) –The Deployment Model
• The Problem with the Relational Database (Part 2) – Predictability

The relational database has been the core mechanism for structured data storage and retrieval for the past 30 years.  My career so far has focused around the relational database, whether it be from a development, administrator or investment perspective.  In all this time the RDB has been the best generic option available for developers …

Recently, a lot of new non-relational databases have cropped up both inside and outside the cloud. One key message this sends is, "if you want vast, on-demand scalability, you need a non-relational database".

If that is true, then is this a sign that the once mighty relational database finally has a chink in its armor? Is this a sign that relational databases have had their day and will decline over time? In this post, we'll look at the current trend of moving away from relational databases in certain situations and what this means for the future of the relational database.[more]

Yahoo! in cloud OR Hadoop? (Яху в облаках) by Alexander & Natalie

tl;dr: Yahoo adds SmugMug support to Profiles. Windows Live coming. Lots of other services, too.

Wow, what a pleasant surprise! Woke up this morning to this story on TechCrunch about 20 new services they’d added to Yahoo Profiles (here’s mine). Lo and behold, SmugMug is one of …