Databases: A Series of Tubes

451 Research analyst Matt Aslett created this Database Landscape Map:

My reaction when I first was this was that diagrams in the style of the London Tube Map have long since jumped the shark, but hey: this works really well. Database technologies don't map into a terribly clean taxonomy, with a range of architectures and intended applications. This is a neat way of connecting together entities that share characteristics with other entities, and can also have multiple charcteristics themselves. The section from SkySQL to Oracle Exalytics, reminiscent of the District Line / Circle Line / Metropolitain line overlap, is a great way of representing how the ways these databases are both similar and different. Kudos, Matt. (Via the author.)