>> When hundreds of companies and thousands of the brightest programmers and sysadmins have been trying to solve a problem for twenty years and still haven’t ma

>> When hundreds of companies and thousands of the brightest programmers and sysadmins have been trying to solve a problem for twenty years and still haven’t managed to come up with an obvious solution that everyone adopts, that says to me the problem is unsolvable. I take issue with the assumption here. What you want, which is obviously "free/open mysql-ish thing that scales indefinatly", is not a problem people have been working that hard to solve until quite recently. To put it in perspective, 20 years ago, many banks offered no access to your money outside open hours and the internet was not a thing normal people used. Today, if you go to Oracle or IBM, you'll find that they'll be happy to help you solve your enourmous problem at great profit to them. The thing that's changed in the last few years, is that Web 2.0 guys want the same power (or more) for a tiny fraction of the cost. This is a good thing. This is exciting. People recognize that the status quo sucks and are working hard on change. The solution will probably involve some SQL, and probably some other tools as well. Don't be such a downer. ;-)