Hi, I am more of an end user, new to column store DB's in general and MonetDB in particular. I'm thinking of using MonetDB in a context where CRUD would be done using SQL statements (as much as possible). I have some questions that I'd appreciate some feedback on: It seems that in column stores single insert/update/delete are much slower than reads. In LucidDB this can be in the order of seconds. Q1) In MonetDB are single insert/update/delete in the order of seconds? Comparable to LucidDB? Q2) If so, when might this change/improve and by how much? On comparative performance. I've seen the Goggle tech talk (2008/01) on MonetDB/X100 indicating some incredible performance: Q3) When might those improvements be incorporated into the stable/released MonetDB? Q4) How does MonetDB compare to Kdb and Vertica? Finally, I'm toying with writing a MonetSQL adapter for Ruby's Sequel ORM, hence the reliance on SQL statements. I have seen the MonetDB ActiveRecord library, which uses SWIG to make the Ruby MonetDB-mapi library. Q5) Will MonetDB be implementing something like MySQL's Information_Schema? Q6) What is the relative performance of the JDBC and SWIG-MAPI interfaces? Thanks Mark