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MapReduce Goes Commercial, Integrated With SQL

Posted by kdawson on from the patterns-in-the-data dept.

CurtMonash writes "MapReduce sits at the heart of Google's data processing — and Yahoo's, Facebook's and LinkedIn's as well. But it's been highly controversial, due to an apparent conflict with standard data warehousing common sense. Now two data warehouse DBMS vendors, Greenplum and Aster Data, have announced the integration of MapReduce into their SQL database managers. I think MapReduce could give a major boost to high-end analytics, specifically to applications in three areas: 1) Text tokenization, indexing, and search; 2) Creation of other kinds of data structures (e.g., graphs); and 3) Data mining and machine learning. (Data transformation may belong on that list as well.) All these areas could yield better results if there were better performance, and MapReduce offers the possibility of major processing speed-ups."

9 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Um, first question: WTF is MapReduce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    and can I run Linux on it? Or it on Linux? Is it available for my iPhone?

    1. Re:Um, first question: WTF is MapReduce? by spun · · Score: 4, Funny

      MapReduce is the algorithm used to determine the optimum folding pattern used to reduce a standard road map back into its folded state. Duh.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    2. Re:Um, first question: WTF is MapReduce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      and can I run Linux on it? Or it on Linux?

      Have you ever considered that it might itself be a distro? A, like, super-leet distro that the big Valley firms have been hacking together for the past ten years, only giving access to employees that sign a super-nasty NDA? A disto that traces back to a Photoshop 1.0 plugin for resizing GIFs?

    3. Re:Um, first question: WTF is MapReduce? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why can't they just look at the creases? Duuuuuuh.

    4. Re:Um, first question: WTF is MapReduce? by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 4, Funny

      I thought those were like Rubik's Cubes where you just rip them apart and put them back together right.

    5. Re:Um, first question: WTF is MapReduce? by Jack9 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm a little dyslexic. I immediately see the wheelbarrow as a MySQL icon (which is almost universally a MySQL article) and read _M_apReduce into SQL = MYSQL in the title. This is proof I'm a reactionary blowhard who often fails to comprehend the summary, much less read the article.

      There is no link because my wrongometer is not working, it has melted through its resin casing.

      --

      Often wrong but never in doubt.
      I am Jack9.
      Everyone knows me.
  2. Re:MySQL has no common sense anyway. . . by SgtPepperKSU · · Score: 5, Funny

    Not like MySQL cared about data integrity in the past. . . whay start now?!

    Gaaah! Data corruption!
    Your post must have been stored in MySQL...

  3. Re:Mmm.. MapReduce is LISP by geminidomino · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well done, AC. You've exposed their dirty little Scheme.

  4. Re:Mmm.. MapReduce is LISP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yes, they're out to Steele LISP's imaginary property.