Save the Wikipedia links: surely you remember the time when database selection boiled down to "Oracle or bust". I'm not implying that S3 was first & dominant ea

Save the Wikipedia links: surely you remember the time when database selection boiled down to "Oracle or bust". I'm not implying that S3 was first & dominant early on: I'm stating it as a flat fact. Yes, many RDBMS offerings have preceded Oracle, but none gained such wide adoption early on. Oracle has always had a strong sales team, so they've been able to grow their business rapidly. Good for them. SQL standardization has nothing to do with it either, because SQL is the user-facing language, not a wire protocol. What travels over the wire between an Oracle client and the server has about as much to do with SQL as the S3 API has to do with XML. In your rush to defend AWS you seem to be falling into the same trap of immaturity as the people who have assumed that S3 will always remain the one true storage layer. It is not your fault, just a sign of the times. You're part of the generally apparent downward trend in level-headed, long-term thinking among the software cadre. For your next project, I recommend that you keep in mind that proper abstractions and clearly defined interfaces are crucial for maintainability of software over the long term. Good luck!