Re:Who pays for this stuff? (Score 1)

Enterprise shops. To have the ability to have the database split and reside on several boxes can allow better performance. Nothing like having a 100+GB database. FYI: It does not look good to spend no or little money on a DB solution and have it not work. If you spend a lot on a database solution you usually are paying for support. Support will end up costing more then the DB to begin with. So $160,000 is cheep when you consider some the Oracle databases run on Million dollar Sun equipment.