MySQL recapitulates phylogeny

MySQL "dynamic columns" would seem to have re-invented much of what Illustra demonstrated with "data blades", which in turn dates back to the Postgres data model.

In my opinion, the relational data model is powerful and, for what it does, it does it very well. And other data models exist, and they do what they do, very well. I haven't used MySQL a tremendous amount, but it always seems like that community finds ways to do what other database implementations do, but differently.