Comment Graph databases (Score 1) 84
Take a look at neo4j.com. When you organize graph-like data as a graph instead of the typical set of relational tables, you can vastly speed up certain kinds of queries, and thinking about the solution becomes much clearer.
This is generic technology with uses far outside military applications. My own needs are for event correlation, and finding the cause in amongst a lot of data telling you the effects of a systems outage.
Marry graph databases to a CPU that is specially tailored for this kind of work and you get a powerhouse.
Cloud providers such as AWS can then bring in these machines, virtualization them, and in a cost effective manner rent them out to everyday developers.
So what can YOU do with it?