Ed Sim recently wrote about how a new startup of his, Greenplum, would ease scaling issues for web 2.0 services with their new scalable database. Unfortunately, his theory essentially boils down to “it’s a cheaper alternative to Oracle.”

Although having another database choice is certainly a good thing for developers, I think Ed has missed the point if he feels that’s all that’s hampering web 2.0 companies. Still, I hit the Greenplum website for a little more education. When I found that getting their white papers required a name and number, I provided real ones, and a rep called me within an hour.

I explained I’d simply been looking for info but asked if there was a way to try on online demo of their Bizgres MPP system. The rep told me he’d love to be able to accomodate, but that I’d have to download the software, buy hardware, do the install, load data, etc. I’ve made a couple of sales calls in my career and it seemed taking the step from a description on a web page to requisitioning hardware and building a test system is a huge leap of faith. Being generally curious, I asked the rep if the effort required to try the system hampered his sales efforts. “Oh yeah!” was his response.

So, I have a message for Ed. If you really want to understand scaling, then ask yourself why Greenplum can’t provide that simple online demo. Perhaps that’ll help you understand why an affordable scalable database, while interesting, isn’t the whole solution to scaling a web 2.0 service.

Oh, and if you’d like to offer that demo give me call - we can help you with that!