Lots depend on what you want to do with your data of course and relational databases will always have their place but two technologies which spring to mind are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadoop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce Also the fact that it is hard to merge the relational database world with the object oriented world will (imho) be tackled at some point. In a lot of project I've been working on a considerable amount of development/sys admin time is spent on 'storing and retrieving data'. It seems only logical to me that people will look for or develop cheaper and easier to implement and maintain alternatives so they can concentrate on more exciting problems

IMHO the EU has a fairly limited view on data storage, the biggest challenge Oracle will face in the next 10 years is answering the question: why do we need a relational database to store our data? I find developing with Java / Hibernate against a relational database very time consuming and was it not that I invested so much time and effort in learning these technologies I would drop them straight away and explore alternatives. The fact that Oracle will add another SQL database to their product range doesn't change this fact that much at all. What I'm trying to say here is that the European Commission doesn't seem to understand that the competition will come from a completely different direction. And keeping the different database brands separate doesn't matter that much.

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The development time for the project now called iPlayer has exceeded five years. Not being able to provide an ETA for other platform versions does not sync with the idea of creating content with public money, to the wider public benefit. Oh, the BBC's content may be for free (but is not free), your access to it may not be. Besides another OS license you may have to pay for data traffic as well http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,2 160454,00.html.