Day 1 COLLABORATE12

Ah yes, the comfort of being around my second family … the user group and fellow Pythianites. I started my day with a BIG DATA (must be in CAPS please :)) session by the Ian Abramson. I have heard quite a buzz about this topic for some time and the buzz is getting louder. I always love to hear about the multi-terabyte data structures/databases as it reminds me of the first time I went from a 20Mb to a 40Mb hard disk on an 8086. In one of my text books in school, the front of the book said:

If there had been as many advancements in automobile technology in the last 20 years as there have been in computers, one would be able to buy a Rolls Royce for 20 cents and it would last a lifetime.

If only that were true … suffice to say, the amount of data running around the internet and so many corporate web sites.repositories is staggering. As per this URL, an internet minute is made up in part of:

• more than 204 million emails are sent
• Amazon rings up about $83,000 in sales
• around 20 million photos are viewed and 3,000 uploaded on Flickr
• at least 6 million Facebook pages are viewed around the world
• more than 61,000 hours of music are played on Pandora
• more than 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube

And, to quote Ian, this is only the beginning. I heard some unfamiliar buzz words which are now part of my technical appetite to become familiar with. Bravo Ian.