Are you in the market for a top database offering to safely and securely store your data, either on-premise or in the cloud? No matter the size of your business or organization, today’s digital culture leaves us with vast amounts of data to store, such as customer contact details, inventory tracking, or account information. A top database solution will enable you to efficiently organize your data and ensure that it remains secure while enhancing accessibility to the information.
Database offerings are part of a highly competitive market, making it difficult to find the right solution to leverage for your business. While all databases accomplish the same key task, they each offer distinct benefits and advantages. When choosing a suitable database software, you should consider how it will integrate with your existing infrastructure, whether it is user-friendly and scalable, the level of support offered, and the overall cost of the software.
We have compiled a list of the leading database solutions on the market, including both free and paid offerings.
List of the Top 10 Database Software
1. MySQL
MySQL is one of the most widely adopted open-source relational database solutions on the market. Its popularity is due to its enterprise-grade features and its compatibility with most applications and popular platforms including Windows, macOS, and Linux. And of course, that it is free to use for non-production environments and individuals! Commercial businesses and organizations require a commercial license.
Developed in 1995 by Swedish Software Engineers Michael Widenius and David Axmark, MySQL has since been acquired by Oracle. MySQL is deployed by some of the world’s leading organizations, including Facebook, Booking.com, and Twitter.
MySQL is reliable, easy to install, and user-friendly, using an easy-to-understand query language. Enterprise-grade features include subqueries, InnoDB Support, Berkeley DB (BDB) transactional storage engine, and prepared statements.
Did you know you can spin up a MySQL instance on the Atlantic.Net cloud? Try out our one-click application now.
2. Oracle RDMS
Created in 1979, Oracle was the first commercially available relational database management system (RDMS) in the world. It remains at the forefront of database offerings, with many improvements to functionality over the years. Its latest version allows integration with cloud-based systems, providing businesses with scalability and flexibility. As well as RDMS solutions, Oracle provides SQL and NoSQL database solutions. Users benefit from the latest in database technology, as well as an extensive suite of solutions and tools.
As Oracle is a high-cost database solution and may require hardware upgrades prior to implementation, it is most suitable for large enterprise-grade organizations that are looking for an effective database to manage large volumes of data.
3. Microsoft SQL Server
The first version of Microsoft SQL Server was released in 1989. This offering is fully compatible with both cloud-based and on-premise servers. As you might expect, Microsoft SQL Server integrates easily with Microsoft products, and one of its key benefits is a user-friendly yet powerful interface. MS SQL Server comes with numerous application services focusing on Machine Learning, Service Broker, Replication, Analysis, and Reporting. MS SQL is hugely popular for data transformation, with ETL processes available out of the box.
MS SQL Server is expensive to purchase, but it is a great solution for medium and large businesses.
4. IBM DB2
DB2 was first released way back in 1983 and is still a very popular database service today. It started life as a database for IBM server hardware, but it will run on any hardware today and is available as a managed service with most cloud service providers. DB2 is all about high-performance data management allowing access, sharing, and analysis of all types of data – structured, semi-structured or unstructured – wherever it’s stored or deployed.
5. PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL is a relational database management system that has grown in popularity in recent years due to its exemplary security and scalability options. Plus, it’s open-source and freely available to anyone. Unlike MySQL, there are no license costs for business and enterprise clients. Postgres is popular with cloud providers because of the way it scales and for its built-in enterprise-grade features for Data Warehousing, Machine Learning, and IoT.
6. MariaDB
MariaDB is a fork of the MySQL server project. A number of developers were concerned when Oracle bought MySQL back in 2009, and as a result, the MariaDB project was launched. MariaDB is all but identical to MySQL on the surface, but dig deeper and you will see that MariaDB has more storage engines, can handle a larger connection pool, and offers faster replication. It is also 100% free, unlike MySQL, but its biggest disadvantage is the support provided; MariaDB is community-driven, whereas MySQL has enterprise-level support packages available.
7. MongoDB
Released in 2009, MongoDB is a relative newcomer but is still a popular document-orientated NoSQL database. MongoDB is popular with modern website applications due to its code-native data access and works extremely well with the Windows Server operating system and sites hosted on IIS. MongoDB resides in system memory, making it very fast, and has unique features such as sharding, a clever way to load balance the database to keep it highly efficient.
8. SAP HANA
SAP HANA is an enterprise-grade in-memory database management system with a big focus on data analytics. It’s another relatively new database platform, originally released in 2010. Its biggest advantages are the decision-making capabilities and real-time analytics, and it’s capable of processing enormous data sets in parallel. SAP HANA is an in-memory DB and is usually sold with dedicated server hardware capable of running it at a breakneck pace.
9. Redis
Redis (the Remote Dictionary Server) is an in-memory key-value data store. It supports various data structures such as strings, lists, maps streams, and spatial indices. It is commonly used in message queue applications and for streaming large datasets, typically for caching data, chat applications, and gaming leaderboards. Redis is open-source and easily scalable and works really well on a cloud platform.
10. Firebird
Firebird is a cross-platform, open-source SQL relational database management system built on the Borland database structure. Firebird’s biggest draw is the support for stored procedures, making data manipulation a very simple process. It is highly redundant and uses careful writes, meaning no transaction logs. This makes data management much easier and database restores a simple process. The cross-platform capabilities mean that no matter what operating system you are running, it will work with Firebird (AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, OS X, server-less, Solaris, Unix, and Windows.
How can Atlantic.Net help with your DBMS?
While most hosting companies can run a web server, databases take a special combination of physical components and technical savvy to implement. The database host must configure the hosting environment to make the data quickly accessible, allow room for growth, and make the database secure enough to resist attacks or corruption.
A company can host its own database, but the advantages offered by database hosting companies can simplify matters. Hosting companies stake their reputations and future sales on your data’s protection. Database hosting companies use active monitoring of all traffic to your database servers, looking for any suspicious activity,
When traffic ramps up on your website, load balancers can distribute it so that your infrastructure continues to run optimally, and if you’re purchasing hardware to fit your specific needs, the costs can add up quickly. As your business grows, you may need to upgrade your hardware sooner rather than later. Thanks to economies of scale, a database hosting company can meet your hardware needs at a fraction of the cost.
Atlantic.Net is uniquely positioned to offer database hosting services for customers in every vertical. For healthcare, The necessity of having a HIPAA-compliant database requires specialized support from a HIPAA-compliant hosting service. Atlantic.Net has the experience to meet your needs with a database Cloud Server so that your patients’ PHI data remains secure and private at all times.
