Hi,
I am more of an end user, new to column store DB's in general and MonetDB in particular.
I'm thinking of using MonetDB in a context where CRUD would be done using SQL statements (as much as possible).
I have some questions that I'd appreciate some feedback on:

It seems that in column stores single insert/update/delete are much slower than reads. 
In LucidDB this can be in the order of seconds.

Q1) In MonetDB are single insert/update/delete in the order of seconds?  Comparable to LucidDB?
Q2) If so, when might this change/improve and by how much?

On comparative performance.
I've seen the Goggle tech talk (2008/01) on MonetDB/X100 indicating some incredible performance:

Q3) When might those improvements be incorporated into the stable/released MonetDB?
Q4) How does MonetDB compare to Kdb and Vertica?

Finally, I'm toying with writing a MonetSQL adapter for Ruby's Sequel ORM, hence the reliance on SQL statements.  I have seen the MonetDB ActiveRecord library, which uses SWIG to make the Ruby MonetDB-mapi library.

Q5) Will MonetDB be implementing something like MySQL's Information_Schema?
Q6) What is the relative performance of the JDBC and SWIG-MAPI interfaces?

Thanks
Mark