How to Tell When a Database is Right for Your Project
When you are selecting databases for your latest use case (or replacing one that’s not meeting your current needs), the good news these days is that you have a lot of options to choose from. Of course, that’s also the bad news. You have a lot to sort through.
There are far more databases to consider and compare than ever before. In December 2012, the end of the first year DB-Engines.com first began ranking databases, they had a list of 73 systems (up significantly from the 18 they first started their list with). As of December 2022, they are just shy of 400 systems. This represents a Cambrian explosion of database technologies over the past decade. There is a vast sea of options to navigate: SQL, NoSQL, and a mix of “multi-model” databases that can be a mix of both SQL and NoSQL, or multiple data models of NoSQL (combining two or more options: document, key-value, wide column, graph and so on).
Further, users should not confuse outright popularity with fitness for their use case. While network effects definitely have advantages (“Can’t go wrong with X if everyone is using it”), it can also lead to groupthink, stifling innovation and competition.
In a recent webinar, my colleague Arthur Pesa and I took users through a consideration of five factors that users need to keep foremost when shortlisting and comparing databases.