While the Apache Hive project is a noble effort, it takes years and deep engineering expertise to create a fully compliant, scalable, optimized SQL query engine.

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Then 50 or 100 folks sit at headquarters and use a query engine and tools -- sold by MicroStrategy or its competitors -- to try to extract insights from these huge databases.

FORBES: Database evangelist

The free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web pages in response to a query like a search engine.

BBC: Web tool 'as important as Google'

Using the HANA in-memory data engine, salespeople can use BusinessObjects Explorer to query and drill into 12 million active customer records and 700 million historical records in real-time, versus the 4-5 hours it used to take to run a report.

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