This document discusses using relational database management systems (RDBMS) in the cloud. It outlines the steps to provision a MySQL database instance on Amazon RDS, including choosing the database and instance type, version, storage, password, input/output options, ports, security groups, and backups. It also mentions using R and RODBC to connect to and analyze data in Cloud MySQL databases, and compares other cloud platforms like Google, Oracle, and Windows for hosting RDBMS and analytics workloads.