If you could have it tomorrow, what new feature(s) would you most like to see in a DBMS? (Try to keep it to physically possible and on-topic suggestions if you can )

My list:

A relational data model and language to replace SQL (no surprise there then!)

Self-optimising storage engine

Generalised constraint support (full referential integrity, multi-relvar constraints, dependency constraints, transition constraints and an optimiser)

Support for multiple assignment

scalability, to stop relational databases from being regarded as "toys"

http://www.roadtofailure.com/2009/06/19/social-media-kills-the-rdbms/.

http://blog.oskarsson.nu/2009/06/nosql-debrief.html

Thanks Rudy, the "NoSQL" initiative was what inspired me to ask the question. Their criticism is actually directed at SQL and SQL products even though they sometimes wrongly assume that it's the relational model at fault. I agree with most of their criticisms. Not to put too fine a point on it, SQL is a dog and was a technology for the 1980s, not the 21st century. Now is a great time to be reviewing what we actually want from our DBMSs.

Crucially, scale out rather than just scale up I think.

Microsoft stupidity is just amazing.

The relational model is all about "sets". Stored procedures need to work on "sets". So, Microsoft added table-valued parameters in SQL 2008. Great, now you can pass in "table sets" for the stored procedure to CRUD against...so far so good.

Problem? Once you create the table-valued "type" and use it in 1000s of stored procedures, if you EVER decide to add an extra column etc......you must drop all the references manually. This is the same thing with user defined types.

Anyone know of an IDE that allows altering of table-valued types and user-defined types? Toad?

There was this thread a short while ago