Making Sense of a Polyglot World: NoSQL, Relational, HTAP, Graphs, Semantics and Cognitive Computing

Over the past three days of intense discussion you've seen and heard about dozens of new databases and technology options available to you. You probably also missed at least as many again because of the sessions in rooms you could not attend. Hopefully you're less confused than before, but before you leave San Jose how about you take a few extra minutes to make sense of this plethora of opportunities now available to you?

Panelists will join us from the major strands of the conference program - NoSQL, Semantics and Cognitive Computing - to share some of the key points and highlights they learned. The discussion will consider the upside of this multi-database, polyglot environment versus (perhaps) the downside of increased complexity and variety. Is it always optimal to use the "best tool for the job"? Can you realistically learn about all of the options and make an informed decision about what you need for your next project?

Dan McCreary is an enterprise data architect and author specializing in emerging database technologies. He has worked at Bell Labs, with Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer as well as founding his own consulting firm of over 75 people. His background includes topics such as high performance computing, programming languages, databases and XML standards. He has published articles on the semantic web, metadata registries, US Federal XML standards, XForms, XQuery and XRX. He is co-chair of the NoSQL Now! Conference and a co-author of the book "Making Sense of NoSQL" by Manning Publications.

April Reeve has spent the last 25 years working as an enterprise architect and program manager. Now she is incorporating her enterprise data management knowledge in new Big Data and Advanced Analytics implementations.

April is an expert in multiple Data disciplines including Data Integration, Big Data, Data Conversion, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Master Data Management, and Data Governance.

Michael Bowers is principal enterprise data architect at the LDS Church. He has spent over 20 years as an enterprise architect, software developer, and database architect. In 2008, Michael brought the MarkLogic NoSQL database to LDS. Today it delivers 1.8 TB of data to 95 million annual visitors with billions of page hits across 182 websites, transactional applications, and web services.

David Booth is an independent consultant and senior software architect at both Hawaii Resource Group and Rancho BioSciences, using Semantic Web technology to make healthcare and biomedical data interoperable between diverse systems. He previously worked at KnowMED, using Semantic Web technology for healthcare quality-of-care and clinical outcomes measurement, and at PanGenX, applying Semantic Web technology to genomics in support of personalized medicine. Before that he worked on Cleveland Clinic's SemanticDB project, which uses RDF and other semantic technologies to perform cardiovascular research. Prior to that, he was a software architect at HP Software, where his primary focus was emerging technologies. He was a W3C Fellow from 2002 to 2005, where he worked on Web Services standards before becoming involved in Semantic Web technology. He has been programming for many years using a variety of programming languages and operating systems. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from UCLA.

Serial Entrepreneur, Joe is CoFounder of, Diamond Web Services, a software development shop in Venice. He has 20+ years of software development experience; working on projects spanning Search Engine technology, Performance Management, scaling Wide Area Networks; for Internet backbone providers, Investment Banks, Telcos & Media. Joe has served/serves on the advisory boards of leading development industry conferences including Zendcon & SemtechBiz, as well as Cross Campus, a growing force in the startup community. Joe is an organizer of several technology oriented meetup groups in Los Angeles and CoFounded Global Accessibility Awareness Day, bridging the gap between disabled citizens and the Internet.