• I've wondered in the past why MS (or for that matter, Oracle or IBM) hadn't developed a specific "database appliance"--hardware with software specifically built to run just the database software. It seems that the RDBMS war is serious enough to justify that type of decision...

    At my last job they were just starting to consider a "DW appliance" from Netezza

    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netezza). I guess the DW world got it first due to the massive amounts of data being processed.

    And maybe I'm wrong, but isn't Project Madison aimed at making a DW-specific appliance as well?