It seems the venerable PostgreSQL database is garnering a new wave of buzz across the IT industry. Maybe our series of articles on Postgres earlier this year helped contribute to this newfound hipness? Probably not, but modern tech organizations hoping for a cheaper alternative to Oracle while still getting support for NoSQL consider it to be a worthy option.
Let’s look more closely at some of the reasons why PostgreSQL remains one of the hottest databases – relational or not – on the market. Perhaps it makes sense for your team’s next data-centric web or desktop application?
PostgreSQL’s increase in popularity caught the attention of InfoWorld magazine, who recently talked about the database’s hot factor earlier this month. In fact, Postgres now ranks as the 4th most popular database in the industry, according to a study by DB-Engines. Not surprisingly, the only three DBs ranked higher are Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server.
The reasons for the growing popularity of Postgres – especially with younger developers – are numerous. InfoWorld’s writer, Matt Asay notes the improved performance brought by the support for JSON included in PostgreSQL 9.2 and boosted in version 9.4. Another important reason involves programmers growing tired of trying to fit even hipper NoSQL options like MongoDB into solution where a relational database makes the most sense.
Ultimately, in a situation when an old-school DB works best, PostgreSQL’s open source nature is simply more cost effective than Oracle or SQL Server. In fact, Postgres first earned its mojo as a cheaper alternative to Oracle. Still, could this old school database scale fast enough for use in modern web applications?
The ubiquitous nature of social networks like Facebook and Twitter puts the onus on modern web applications to be extremely scalable. Most RDBMS options generally provide poor scalability, as did Postgres for most of its existence. Asay notes the introduction of Citus, an extension for PostgreSQL, provides a level of scalability rivaling many of the popular NoSQL databases.
Citus supports Postgres instances across multiple nodes, while providing a distributed model for transactions and SQL queries. These features give this veteran relational database the parallelism required for a massively scalable application able to compete in today’s market place. Take that, Cassandra.
While Citus is available as an open source extension, the company that developed it also offers a commercial version with full support. This is a similar model that EnterpriseDB followed with PostgreSQL itself. Citus provides a great option for shops working with Postgres for development and them implementing Citus for extra scalability before going live.
It also lets companies take advantage of their in-house talent’s database skills without spending on training in the latest NoSQL database options. These bonuses are arguably behind the still growing popularity of PostgreSQL. Elijah Zupancic, the Director of Solutions Engineering for Joyent comments on some of the other core reasons.
“From a developer perspective, it is a pleasure to use. The documentation is wonderful, the data types reflect the types developers work with, and there is little surprising.”
Keep coming back to the Betica Blog for additional insights on software development, testing, and occasionally, databases.
Posted on December 18, 2017 | Categories News, Software Development | Tags Citus, Database, Database Management, EnterpriseDB, NoSQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, RDBMS, Software Development, SQL