Did Mike Stonebraker change his mind about what the criteria are from a column store database (CDBMS) or did someone spill coffee on Vertica’s WordPress install and short out his post? Either way I was surprised to see Mike’s blog — in which he opined on the criteria for column store databases — has been canceled, wiped out, deleted.

To be fair, Mike’s big blog drop wasn’t really up there with the other technology news this week. Steve Jobs sadly has had to take another leave of absence from running Apple (we wish him all the best of health and hope the best for him and his family). Eric Schmidt stepped down as CEO of Google and co-founder Larry Page has taken his place. iPads — a product that didn’t exist a year ago — are now being piloted or deployed by over 80% of Fortune 100 companies. That’s one of the fastest adoption curves in history and shows that even conservative enterprises can move quickly when they see value in technology.

Not as quickly as Vertica taking down Mike’s blog, mind you. (I felt the rush of wind all the way from Massachusetts.) Given that SAND responded rather eloquently and Curt Monash and Seth Grimes both weighed in with excellent points as well, I thought they’d keep it up for historical reasons if nothing else. That we all concurred the blog was a good start but it wasn’t a vendor’s place to lay down the rules to define the criteria for column store is besides the point. It was the one blog on Vertica’s site that actually generated interest and debate (the last 24 blog posts have less comments combined than the one they took down.)

Strange? Perhaps dissention is unacceptable; a case of “Silence when you speak!” If that’s the case, it must make Vertica development meetings interesting…