It all comes down to cost barrier to entry, it's a shame IBM mainframes are still so damn expensive. Perhaps if somebody could offer {DB2|Oracle|Informix|Sybas

It all comes down to cost barrier to entry, it's a shame IBM mainframes are still so damn expensive. Perhaps if somebody could offer {DB2|Oracle|Informix|Sybase} As A Service, like what many providers do with PostgreSQL and MySQL, it would be a different story for startups. My profression involves moving MSSQL and Sybase databases to MySQL and MariaDB, then I go and read some of the features from the article in Oracle and DB2 documentation and think to myself "I ain't helping fucking nobody", the higher-ups in enterprise and startups usually only see upfront costs, not long term benefits. As per your first question; they are getting there. PostgreSQL now has a built-in function for managing materialised views, in MySQL/MariaDB that is still hand-rolled. MariaDB however does have Virtual Columns and Dynamic columns (to tackle nested tables, as per the article). Look to MariaDB for the MySQL developments, as Oracle are bringing very little to the table in terms of matching MySQL features to Oracle (not surprising). But they are resolving important security, and infrastructure issues and improving InnoDB heavily. Also PostgreSQL does have HSTORE, for storing JSON data types, very tasty.