Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

Talk by Charlie Garrod, Carnegie Mellon University

Ending the Reign of the Database
Thursday, February 18, 2010
SCI 240, 5:00 pm (cookies at 4:45)

Abstract

Relational databases are a key component in many software systems, yet they are barely adequate for many tasks for which they are used. In this talk I will examine how modern web applications typically use data, discuss why databases are often not ideal for these data management tasks, and describe an alternative: distributed data management services. Distributed data management services are reliable, scalable distributed system components modeled after familiar data structures (such as sets), that can be used to build more complex distributed systems.