If you’ve talked to me about programming languages and Wall Street in the last 4 years, I’ve probably mentioned kx. This is a company which makes a combination programming environment and database based on a language called q which is derived from APL. (Yes, APL, the language invented in 1957 before there was a [...]

A few days ago I found myself giving database advice to a friend with a new startup. His problem is a pretty common one: he has a very large corpus of data, over which he will run compute-intensive proprietary algorithms. Both the data and the computation will require a cluster of machines. He has [...]

Many in the blogosphere noticed when Stonebraker and Dewitt at The Database Column took offense at the idea that map-reduce is the solution to many of life’s problems. The idea that a simple idea, promoted by a services company, can blow away 20+ years of distributed database research, bothers them for some reason. Sure, [...]