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I was speaking with Michael Stonebraker this morning.  I mentioned that lately many have been referencing comments he has made over the last couple of years.  And I also mentioned that many had interpreted them as he was implying the RDBMS is “doomed”.  Mike has been saying the same thing for years, but the current NoSQL movement seems to have picked up on this and highlighting one of the RDBMS's own pioneers is predicting its …

Key-value databases are catching fire these days. Memcached, Redis, Cassandra, Keyspace, Tokyo Tyrant, and a handful of others are surging in popularity, judging by the contents of my feed reader.

I find a number of things interesting about these tools.

• There are many more of them than open-source traditional relational databases. (edit: I mean that there are many options that all seem similar to each other, instead of 3 or 4 standing out as the giants.)
• It seems that a lot of people are simultaneously inventing solutions to their problems in private without being aware of each other, then open-sourcing the results. That points to a sudden sea change in architectures. Tipping points tend to be abrupt, which would explain isolated redundant development.
• Many of the products are feature-rich with things programmers need: diverse language bindings, APIs, embeddability, and the ability to speak familiar …

Welcome to the 152nd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

PostgreSQL

Courtesy the United States PostgreSQL Association, the big news: PostgreSQL 8.4 Released!.

Josh Berkus writes, “Now that PostgreSQL 8.4 is out, I thought I’d write a little about my favorite 8.4 feature. As Mr. Performance Whack-a-Mole, what makes me happy about 8.4 is the ability to whack moles faster … which is why I’m very fond of pg_stat_statements.”

On ad’s corner, …