Cloud Connect Conference
15 Feb 2012
Santa Clara Convention Center

The keynotes were the most interesting. One VP at Google made a couple of interesting points:
1) The cloud is similar to an ancient Turkish marketplace. Apparently the markets back then were walled and secure, with guards who kept the pickpockets out as best they could.
2) Data is difficult to move around, so it makes sense for it to be in one place.

Asking around in the booths, I found out more about the future of data models. The cloud is now full of non-structured data, which does not lend itself easily to the relational model. There are many custom database technologies being adopted now, and Google's Big Table is just one of them. You can read more about Big Table at:
http://storagemojo.com/2006/09/07/googles-bigtable-distributed-storage-system-pt-i/

All of the models that are non-relational are referred to as "nosql" databases. These include Google's proprietary BigTable, as well as Hadoop, Cassadra, and MongoDb (mentioned in a previous post to this blog.)