I was reading Andy Pavlo’s end-of-year review of the database world. He’s done this for a number of years, and there are links to previous recaps in the piece. He is an associate computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, working on quite a few database-related projects. In the review, he tends to track the database world from the perspective of business success and money. There are certainly parts of it that discuss technical changes, but my overall impression is more about the business and usage success than it is about the way database systems work.

The main thing that struck me after reading the review was how many database systems there are in the world. I hadn’t heard of any of these: RaptorDB, TigerData, Tembo, StormDB, Translattice, FerretDB, DocDB, SpiralDB, Tantivy, SkySQL, HeavyDB, and more. I’m sure I missed listing some I didn’t recognize, and quite a few of these are PostgreSQL-based systems, but still, that’s a lot of database systems that exist and are having success.

Last year, I ran into someone who worked at a company that had implemented ArangoDB for the software their company sold. This system had something to do with tracking parts and managing schematics for machines, which is a great place to use a graph database. I asked them why they didn’t pick a more well-known and used graph database like Neo4j. He answered that cost was a big reason, but if Arango failed to wrok, they felt could port their data over to another platform. He did mention that training new people was a challenge, which I believe is a good reason to stick with more mainstream systems. However, I understand that people placing bets on less well-known technologies is how the popularity of those platforms grows.

As a side note, I keep confusing ArangoDB with AvacadoDB. Maybe because I like guacamole.

If I look at DB-Engines, I see lots of platforms I recognize and a few I don’t, but overall this is a long list. Some you could argue aren’t really database platforms, but these are platforms people report they are using. There are 429 ranked, which is quite a few. I’m not sure there are that many different models of cars being produced in the US each year.

Many of these are specialized platforms and might be suitable or even preferred in certain situations. I wonder if any of you reading this are running Hazelcast or Presto. Or anything else unusual. If you are, why? What’s better about one of these systems than the top 5-10 in any category?

As I look around I realize there are so many databases available to choose from. Perhaps it’s just me, but I prefer choosing from a small list rather than a huge one. Do you feel the same way?

Steve Jones

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