The large scale computing space is getting interesting
Via Gruber via Winer comes Amazon’s SimpleDB:
Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.
Based on the limited architecture information you can glean from the API docs it looks like it may be a column store under the hood. Have recently come off a project where we used both Amazon’s EC2 and S3, if this thing is as good, it will be a nice addition to the arsenal. Of course it means not having your data close, and possibly not having as much fine-grained control over indexing etc., but for most people this won’t be an issue (indeed in Kowari/Mulgar we indexed everything like SDB does).
Semantic web developers have known for years that there is no such thing as the universal database any more (if there ever was), it all depends on what your data looks like and how you access it. It’s good to see the mainstream is starting to catch up.