Inside "Big Data management": ogres, onions, or parfaits?

In this paper we review the history of systems for managing "Big Data" as well as today's activities and architectures from the (perhaps biased) perspective of three "database guys" who have been watching this space for a number of years and are currently working together on "Big Data" problems. Our focus is on architectural issues, and particularly on the components and layers that have been developed recently (in open source and elsewhere) and on how they are being used (or abused) to tackle challenges posed by today's notion of "Big Data". Also covered is the approach we are taking in the ASTERIX project at UC Irvine, where we are developing our own set of answers to the questions of the "right" components and the "right" set of layers for taming the "Big Data" beast. We close by sharing our opinions on what some of the important open questions are in this area as well as our thoughts on how the dataintensive computing community might best seek out answers.