Cloud Computing publication categorizer

On January 8, a Database Column reader asked for our views on new distributed database research efforts, and we'll begin here with our views on MapReduce. This is a good time to discuss it, since the recent trade press has been filled with news of the revolution of so-called "cloud computing." This paradigm entails harnessing large numbers of (low-end) processors working in parallel to solve a computing problem. In effect, this suggests constructing a data center by lining up a large number of "jelly beans" rather than utilizing a much smaller number of high-end servers.