Cloud Databases

US Army Cloud Computing Class at Ft. Gordon, GA

By G C Network | June 24, 2011

A few weeks ago I had the distinct pleassue of teaching yet another US Army cloud computing class.  This time the venue was Ft. Gordon, GA and the students definitely…

78 Agency Services Identified for Cloud Transition

By G C Network | May 29, 2011

The Office of Management and Budget recently released a list of 78 projects slated for transition to cloud over the next year. The most common application, according to a FierceGovernmentIT,…

NGA Sets GEOINT Strategic Direction with Earth Builder

By G C Network | May 15, 2011

Last month Google and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency started sharing details about their “GEOINT on Demand” collaboration. The project, named Earth Builder, was built specifically to enable NGA to…

Teleology Systems Introduces CloudeFX at DoDIIS

By G C Network | April 27, 2011

Next week at DoDIIS, NJVC will be showcasing a few of our government cloud computing partners. One of the most exciting of these is the Cloud Service Orchestration Framework by…

Cloud Computing Highlighted at DoDIIS 2011

By G C Network | April 27, 2011

Are you going to DoDIIS? Schedule for May 1-5, 2011 in Detroit, Michigan, the conference highlights the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) commitment to developing and maintaining secure and reliable networks for…

Washington DC a Cloud Computing Trendsetter!

By G C Network | April 16, 2011

A TechJournal South article last week named Washington, DC as a leading trendsetter in cloud computing. Citing a Microsoft sponsored survey, conducted by 7th Sense research, D.C. was highlighted as particullarly receptive…

Melvin Greer Cited by IBM for Cloud Computing Innovation

By G C Network | April 5, 2011

Congratulations to my good friend Melvin Greer for being awarded IBM’s first ever ACE Award!! “Melvin Greer, Lockheed Martin Senior Fellow has won IBM’s first ever Awarding Customer Excellence (ACE)…

“GovCloud: The Book” Launched at National Press Club Event

By G C Network | March 30, 2011

As many of you know, today marked the official launch of my first book – GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government. Today’s venue was the National Press Club…

“Cloud Musings on Forbes” Launched!!

By G C Network | March 24, 2011

Today I published my first post on Forbes.com!! At the invitation of Bruce Upbin, Forbes.com editor, I will be contributing posts monthly. I see this not only as an honor,…

Tech America and INSA Form Cloud Computing Advisory Groups

By G C Network | March 6, 2011

Last week TechAmerica announced the formation of a “cloud computing commission” to advise the White House on the current plans to steer more than $20B worth of IT services toward…

Joab Jackson, in his “Cloud computing leaving relational databases behind” article, makes some pretty interesting points on the incompatibility of relational databases with cloud-based infrastructures. He first list the various cloud optimized databases:

And then notes that they all have cloud computing-specific characteristics.

  • They can be run in distributed environments,
  • None of them are transactional in nature, and
  • They all sacrifice some advanced querying capability for faster performance.

Since the national security community literally lives and dies by the information in their relational databases, what does that mean if the community adopts cloud technology in order to benefit from the scalability and economy?

The key issue here is that in cloud implementations, database material is spread across different locations. Executing complex queries with relational databases across vast geographic distances can slow response time. It is also difficult to design and maintain an architecture to replicate relational data across different locations and keep that data in sync if one location goes down.

Since cloud implementations are seemingly the wave of the future, community CIO’s and analyst alike need to start thinking about the implications of the coming transition from relational databases today.

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network

3 Comments

  1. Randall on October 7, 2008 at 10:30 am

    I don’t know Kevin, I think relational db’s will be around for a long time.

    You know when we start thinking in the cloud, we think every cloud computing application is going to have millions of users so can’t use a relational database, but there are lots and lots of problems that relational databases solve — in the cloud — very easily.

    And there are some very scalable websites built on top of relational databases.



  2. James Urquhart on October 8, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    I second Randall’s comment. If your database is focused on complex set-based analytics, then stick to a relational database. If you need to map the results of that analytics to a large audience, replicate results from the relational query results to either static pages or perhaps a Map-Reduce based data store. It doesn’t have to be a “paradigm shift” in any way shape or form.



  3. Anonymous on April 30, 2009 at 1:53 am

    ^^Thanks!!

    婚前徵信婚姻感情大陸抓姦外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信尋人感情挽回大陸抓姦離婚工商徵信婚前徵信外遇抓姦感情挽回尋人大陸抓姦離婚家暴工商徵信法律諮詢跟蹤工商徵信婚前徵信感情挽回外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴尋人大陸抓姦離婚大陸抓姦外遇尋人家暴工商徵信法律諮詢家暴感情挽回大陸抓姦外遇婚前徵信離婚尋人工商徵信外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信大陸抓姦尋人感情挽回外遇抓姦婚前徵信感情挽回尋人大陸抓姦工商徵信法律諮詢離婚家暴工商徵信外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信尋人感情挽回大陸抓姦離婚婚前徵信工商徵信外遇抓姦尋人離婚家暴大陸抓姦感情挽回法律諮詢離婚感情挽回婚前徵信外遇抓姦家暴尋人工商徵信外遇抓姦法律諮詢家暴婚前徵信尋人感情挽回">徵大陸抓姦離婚婚前徵信工商徵信外遇抓姦尋人離婚家暴大陸抓姦感情挽回法律諮詢