Dryad

Dryad seems to be Microsoft's answer to MapReduce, and logically is an extension. MapReduce identified a key paradigm that was super-simple. But as mentioned in the Pig Latin paper, and in Chris's talk on Monday, this paradigm is not quite sufficient. Dryad allows for much more general computational DAGs with vertices implementing arbitrary computations and using any number of inputs and outputs.

Dryad trades off simplicity for generality. This is a much more complex programming model, requiring the developers to understand the structure of the computation and properties of the system resources. This system will definitely be influential but not in its current form. This somehow doesn't quite have the same elegance of MapReduce. I think to be adopted on a wide-scale, the system will have to be refined to produce simpler higher-level "macros" capturing typical queries. But this work will lead towards identification and building of such programming models.