Anyone remotely within the orbit of SAP lately knows that its number-one focus is the HANA in-memory database and development platform. At this week's Sapphire conference in Orlando, the vendor sought to show the progress it is making in both building out HANA's capabilities as well as attracting developers and partners to HANA.

Amazon Web Services is improving the performance of its DynamoDB database service with Parallel Scan, which gives users faster access to their tables.

SAP's HANA Cloud Platform, consisting of the core in-memory database plus application development tools, analytics and integration services, will eventually underpin all of its cloud-based applications, the company said at its Sapphire conference.

Big data may seem to promise big insights to users, but more isn't always better, cautions statistician Nate Silver, who became one of America's most well-known faces of data analysis after his FiveThirtyEight blog accurately predicted 2012 presidential election results in all 50 states.

SAP is set to offer customers the option of running their applications on top of a cloud-based version of its HANA in-memory database technology.

SAP is hoping to sow more seeds of interest in its newest technologies, including the HANA in-memory database, through a new online training program available at no charge.

Users of the Hadoop data processing platform now have two more search engines to help them sort through their mountains of information.

Open source database provider 10gen is expanding into storage services, offering a hosted backup service for its flagship MongoDB data store.

It was a typically busy year for SAP, with the company making headlines for strong sales of its HANA in-memory database, high-profile acquisitions and aggressive moves into cloud computing.

The meet-up in San Francisco last month had a whiff of revolution about it, like a latter-day techie version of the American Patriots planning the Boston Tea Party.

SQL Server 2008, aka "Katmai," gives SQL Server shops plenty of reasons to get excited. The best SQL Server release to date, it sports more nice new features than you can count, and the improvements extend to both performance and manageability. In a few cases, such as the Resource Governor, you'll wish Microsoft had taken the functionality a little further. But whether you manage an OLTP environment, or an OLAP environment, or both, you will most likely find Katmai compelling. It easily passes my own five-point test for upgrades.