Back in June 2014, the top five most popular databases were exactly the same as June 2022: Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL and MongoDB. The difference is their relative popularity: PostgreSQL and MongoDB have been gaining in popularity relative to the relational incumbents. By Matt Asay.
In his opening keynote, MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria shared statistics that showed MongoDB has become mainstream data infrastructure for over 35,000 customers, from Fortune 500 companies to garage-dwelling startups alike.
Two main trends are clear from the article:
- The rise and rise of general purpose databases
- Databases become data platforms
In 2014, MongoDB helped to spark an industry trend toward specialization; in 2022, it’s part of a movement away from specialization. The irony is that MongoDB has never touted specialization, and has instead marketed itself as a general-purpose database from the start. Why? Because, as O’Grady explained, “general purpose” makes developers’ lives easier, and MongoDB has always focused on developer convenience.
MongoDB has always handled data relations just fine; it has handled them differently than a relational database. So, back then, the company accepted the NoSQL label, despite its problems (who wants to be defined by what they’re not?), because it helped developers think beyond tabular data structures. Since that time, there has been an explosion in non-relational, or multi-model, databases. Today, DB-Engines includes nearly 400 databases, but less than half of them are relational databases. From document to time series to graph to columnar to key-value to [insert new database type here], the industry has kept using relational databases even as it has found a home for a wide variety of new databases. Good read!
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