While Oracle thus far has been quiet over the past few years, its developers have been at work devising ways to bring NoSQL-like speed and flexibility to its MySQL open-source database.

For OpenWorld, Oracle has devoted to something called the Oracle NoSQL Database. The work that the company has done thus far to equip MySQL with NonSQL functionality might provide a clue as to the nature of this new offering.

Oracle's work has focused on combining the responsiveness of NoSQL systems with the full range of options of SQL-based systems such as Oracle's own.

Oracle's potential secret weapon for revving SQL to NoSQL speeds? The Memcached caching technology, which Facebook and many other services already use. The company is looking at at least two ways of combining Memecached with its open-source MySQL database.

NoSQL databases have been commonly praised for the speed at which they can serve and ingest data, when of traditional SQL systems such as Oracle's. However, they for language for working with data, something that SQL provides.