# Cloud Database Standards Panel at Glue Conference

By [Continuations](https://continuations.com) · 2009-05-13

cloud, database, sql, standards, glue conference, json

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In January I wrote a post saying that we need a [standard for cloud databases](http://continuations.com/post/74319683/cloud-database-standard-needed).  That post is now the #2 search result on google for “cloud database standards” and there are still no results that even hint at emerging standards.  So it will be fun today to moderate a panel on this topic at the [Glue Conference](http://www.gluecon.com) with [Alex Iskold](http://alexiskold.wordpress.com/) and [Stu Charlton](http://www.stucharlton.com/).  I am planning on a lot of audience participation as there are a lot of technical folks at the conference.  Here are some of the questions I am planning to cover:

*   What exactly is a cloud database?  
    
*   Do we really need these?  There is a recent paper which [compares Map Reduce performance with parallel relational databases](http://database.cs.brown.edu/projects/mapreduce-vs-dbms/) and finds the latter to perform 3-5x faster and require less code.
    

*   What about the approach pursued by [Drizzle](https://launchpad.net/drizzle)?  Can’t we hang on to SQL that way?
    
*   What about key value stores? Those seem all the rage right now.
    
*   Is the need for cloud databases all about performance or is it also about ease of development?
    

*   Why do we need standards?  Is portability really important? Who has migrated their current relational db ever? Is it learning curve?
    
*   Is there a native data format for the cloud? Is it XML? Is it JSON?  Something else?
    
*   In the cloud, how will “things” be identified (certainly not autoincrement ID column)?
    

*   Why do we need all these separate query languages? [FBQL](http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/FQL), [YQL](http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/), [XQuery](http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/), [SimpleDB queries](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/02/amazon-simpledb.html), …
    

*   How does this relate to IP and licensing? [SQL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL) was invented by IBM in early 70s and not standardized until the mid 80s.
    

*   Any candidates for a cloud database standard?
    

If anyone has others questions they would like to see discussed (and are not at the conference), just add them as a comment.  Also, of course, any answers to the questions above would be great as comments.

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*Originally published on [Continuations](https://continuations.com/cloud-database-standards-panel-at-glue-conference)*