Is MapReduce a step back?
Well, you can find out at http://databasecolumn.vertica.com/2008/01/mapreduce-a-major-step-back.html and http://databasecolumn.vertica.com/2008/01/mapreduce-continued.html.
Interesting reading.
Jiří Činčura is .NET, C# and Firebird expert. He focuses on data and business layers, language constructs, parallelism, databases and performance. For almost two decades he contributes to open-source, i.e. FirebirdClient. He works as a senior software engineer for Microsoft. Frequent speaker and blogger at www.tabsoverspaces.com.