What is Serverless database
A serverless database is any database that follows the core principles of the serverless computing paradigm. The core principles of serverless computing include :
- Little to no manual server management
- Automatic, elastic app/service scale
- Built-in resilience and inherently fault tolerant service
- Always available and instant access
- Consumption-based rating or billing mechanism
Some advantages of a Serverless database are:
- Serverless databases leverage consumption-based pricing. In other words, pay for the resources that are used rather than the size of the pre-provisioned cluster.
- Developers can focus on their data rather than their databases. The burden of having to monitor database load or capacity and take action is removed due to the elastic scaling nature of a serverless database.
Why Serverless database?
- Cost efficiency: A serverless database focuses performance powers on particular tasks only when there is a direct need. You pay for the resources that are used rather than the size of the pre-provisioned cluster.
- Automated scalability: A serverless database can autonomously scale the system depending on the workload in hand, without requiring any manual intervention or configuration.
- Smoother operations: A serverless database eliminates the need to manage servers, clusters, backups, patches, and other infrastructure tasks that can be tedious and error-prone.
- Higher productivity: A serverless database allows developers to focus on their data and application logic rather than their databases. They can also leverage familiar tools and languages such as SQL to interact with the data.
Serverless database list
- Amazon Aurora Serverless: A proprietary service from AWS that’s compatible with Postgres and MySQL. It scales automatically based on the database load and supports both relational and document data models.
- Amazon DynamoDB: A fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and consistent performance with seamless scalability. It supports key-value and document data models and integrates with other AWS services such as Lambda and API Gateway.
- Azure SQL Database Serverless: A cloud-based relational database service that automatically scales compute resources based on workload patterns. It supports SQL Server features such as T-SQL, JSON, and spatial data types.
- Azure Synapse Serverless: A cloud-based analytics service that enables users to query data on demand using SQL. It supports various data sources such as Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure Cosmos DB.
- CockroachDB Serverless: A distributed SQL database that provides high availability, strong consistency, and horizontal scalability. It supports ACID transactions, geo-partitioning, and JSON data types.
- Fauna: A distributed NoSQL database that provides global consistency, multi-model access, and temporal queries. It supports document, graph, relational, and search data models and integrates with various frameworks and languages such as GraphQL, React, and Python.
- Google Firebase: A platform for building mobile and web applications that provides various backend services such as authentication, storage, hosting, and analytics. It includes Firebase Realtime Database and Cloud Firestore, which are NoSQL databases that sync data in real time across devices.
- PlanetScale: A cloud-native MySQL database platform that provides horizontal scalability, high availability, and data security. It supports schema changes without downtime, automatic backups and restores, and multi-cloud deployments.
