Right now almost every web application has an Apache server fronting a database box running MySQL or its closed source equivalent like Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server. The data bottleneck in all those applications is the SQL box, which is generally doing a very simple job in a very complex manner that made total sense for minicomputers in 1975 but doesn’t make as much sense today. Five years from now the situation will be very different with HBase running everywhere, the dedicated SQL box eliminated completely, and the database shared across redundant web servers like a micro-Google.

- Roberto "X" Cringely, em "The Sequel Dilemma"