Very good article about What’s Essential – And What’s Not – In Big Data Analytics. Starts with a Big Data Analytics overview, then dives into the columnar vs. row based DBs debate (only to find that that’s ultimately not generally important, as all these systems are built to scale, and it depends on your data and requirements which DB engine handles it best). In-database analytics is introduced (with MapReduce as an example) as a concept that’ll become more important, and the final point is, rightfully so, that whichever RDBMS you choose, it has to play nice with your data management tools ecosystem.